Mein Kampf

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MEIN

KAMPF

by ADOLF

hitler

translated by

RALPH MANHEIM

boston

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN CO M^P A N ^
jattietittie Pt«« Can*tttBe

GOPVRtGHT. 1943. BT BOUGBTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, igas. BY VERLAG FRZ. EBBR NACHF, G.M.B.H.
COPYRIGHT, X 927 , BY VERLAG FR2. BEER NACHF, C.M.B.H.

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CAMBRIDGE . MASSACBUSBTFS
MINTED IN THE U.5^.

DEDICATION"-^

On November 9, 1923, at 12.30 in the afternoon, in front of the
Feldhermhalle as well as in the courtyard of the former War
Ministry, the following men fell, with loyal faith in tb**. resur-
rection of their people:

ALFARTH, Feux, businessman, h. July 5, 1901
BAURIEDL, Andreas, hatter, b. May 4, 1879
CASELLA, Theodor, bank clerk, b. August 8, 1900
EHRLICH, Wilhelm, bank clerk, b. August 19, 1894
FAUST, Martin, bank clerk, b. January 27, 1901
HECHENBERGER, Anton, locksmith, b. September
28, 1902

KORNER, Oskar, businessman, b. January 4, 187s '

KUHN, Karl, headwailer, b. July 26, 1897
LAFORCE, Karl, student of engineering, b. October 28,

1904

NEUBAUER, Kurt, valet, b. March 27, 1899
PAPE, Claus von, businessman, b. Aug^st 16, 1904
PFORDTEN, Theodor von der. County Court Coun-
cillor, b. May 14, 1873

RICKMERS, Johann, retired Cavalry Captain, b. May
7, 1881

SCHEUBNER-RICHTER, Max Erwin von. Doctor
of Engineering, b. January 9, 1884
STRANSKY, Lorenz, Ritter von, engineer, b. Mards
14, 1889

WOLF, Wilhelm, businessman, b. October 19, 1898

So-called national authorities denied these dead heroes* a
common grave.

Therefore I dedicate to them, for common memory, the first
volume of this work. As its blood witnesses, may they shine
forever, a glowing example to the followers of our movement.

Adolf nUUr

LANDSBERG AM LECH *

rortress prison
October 16, 1924

PREFACE ___

On Apkil 1, 1924, 1 entered upon my prison term in the fortress
of Landsberg am Lech, as sentenced by the People’s Court in
Munich on that day.

Thus, after years of uninterrupted work, an ojf^ortunity was
for the first time offered me to embark upon a task which many
had demanded and which I myself felt to be worth while for the
movement. I decided to set forth, in two volumes, ihe aims of
pur movement, and also to draw a picture of its development.
From this it will be possible to learn more than from any purely
doctrinaire treatise.

At the same time I have had occasion to give an account of my
own development, in so far as this is necessary for the under-
standing of the first as well as the second volume, and in so far
as it may serve to destroy the foul legends about my person dished
up in the Jewish press.

I do not address this work to strangers, but to those adherents
of the movement who belong to it with their hearts, and whose
intelligence is eager for a more penetrating enlightenment. I
know that men are won over less by the written than by the
spoken word, that every great movement on this earth owes its
growth to great orators and not to great writers.

Nevertheless, for a doctrine to be disseminated uniformly and
coherently, its basic elements must be set down for all time. To
this end 1 wish to contribute these two volumes as foundation
stones in our common edifice.

The Author

LAND5BERO AM LECH
rORIBESS FjBISON

CO'NTENTS

Translator’s Note ai

Introduction by Konrad Heiden xv

VOLUME ONE

A RECKONING

I. In tee House or My Parents 3

II. Years or Study and Suttering in Vienna 19

III. General Political Considerations Based on

My Vienna Period 66

IV. Munich 126

V. The World War 157

VI. War Propaganda 176

VII. The Revolution 187

VIII. The Beginning or My Political Activity 207

IX. The ‘German Workers’ Party’ 217

X. Causes or the Collapse 225

XL Nation and Race 284

Xn. The First Period of Development of the

National Socialist German Workers* Party 330

VOLUME TWO

THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST MOVEMENT

1.

Philosophy and Party

373

n.

The State

386

III.

Subjects and Citizens

438

Contents •

IV. P F.-RS riN AT.TT V AND THE CONCEPTION OE THE

Folkish State 442

V. Philosophy and Orgaiozation - 452

VI. The Struggle of the Early Period — the

Significance of the Spoken Word 463

VII. The ^Struggle with the Red Front 480

Vin. The Strong Man Is Mightiest Alone 508

IX. Basic Ideas Regarding the Meaning and

Organization of the SA 518

X. Federalism as a Mask 554

XI. Propaganda and Organization 579

XII. The Trade-Union Question 596

XIII. German Alliance Policy after the War 607

XIV. Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy 641

XV. The Right of Emergency Defense 668

Conclusion 688

Index 689

Translator's Note

MEIN KAMPF is written in the style of a self-educated mod-
em South German with a gift for oratory. Of course this picture
does not begin to characterize Mtler the but it does, I tViinTc,

account for the elements of his style.

Be^ning in his Vienna period, Hitler was a voracious news-
paper reader. The style of the Austrian press, as Karl Kraus
never wearied of pointing out, was ^ovenly, illogical, pretentious.
Even the grammar, doubtless because of the large number of
Czechs, Hungarians, and other foreigners in the trade, was im-
commonly bad. Hitler inveighed against the Vieimese melting
pot, but was unconsciously influenced by its literary style.

He must also have read popular pamphlets on history, psy-
chology, racist biology, and political subjects. He never at-
tempted to systematize his knowledge; he retained, for the most
part, disjointed facts that met some personal need, and phrases
that appealed to his oratorical sense. But the main source of
his pet phrases was the theater and the opera. He is full of popu-
lar quotations from Goethe and Schiller, and largely unintelligible
flights of Wagnerian terminology. There is no indication that he
ever read any of the German, let alone foreign classics, from
which he might have gathered some feeling for stylistic prin-
ciples.

^ Hitler has been called a paranoiac; at all events, his view of
the world is highly personal. Even where he is discussing theo-
retical matters like ‘the state,’ ‘race,’ etc., he sddorq pursues any
logic inherent in the subject matter. He makes the most extraor-
dinary allegations without so much as an attempt to prove them.
Often there is no visible connection between one paragraph and

XU

Translator’s Note

the next. The logic is purely psychological: Hitler is fighting his
persecutors, magnifying his person, creating a dream-worM in
whiqh he can be an important figure. In more concrete passages
he is combating political adversaries in his own movement, but
even here the continuity is mystifying, because he never tells us
whom he is arguing against, but sets up every political expedient
as a universal principle.

This personalism makes Hitler a poor observer. His style is
without color and movement. Images are rare, and when they
do appear, they tend to be purely verbal and impossible to
visualize, like the ‘cornerstone for the end of German domina-
tion in the monarchy,’ or forcing ‘the less strong and less healthy
back into the womb of the eternal unknown.’ The mixed meta-
phor is almost a specialty of modem German journalism, but
Hitler, with his eyes closed to the visual world, was an expert in
his own right. Pohner, for example, was ‘a thorn in the eyes of
venal officials.’

A non-German of Hitler’s intellectual level would in some
ways write quite differently. Germany was a land of high general
culture, with the largest reading public of any country in the
world. In the lower middle dass, there was a tremendous educa-
tional urge. People who in other countries would read light
novels and popular magazines devoured works on art, sdence,
history, and above all philosophy. Certain philosophical phrases
became journalistic diches. Hitler is forever speaking of ‘con-
cepts,’ of things ‘ as such’ {an sich). Moreover, he is constantly at
pains to show that he, too, is cultured. Hence the long, intricate
sentences in which he frequently gets lost; hence such sententious
bombast as the opening lines of Chapter Ten.

The absence of movement and development in Mein Kampf
is surdy connected with Hitler’s lack of concern for the objective
world. But its stylistic expression, the preponderance of sub-
stantives over verbs, again shows the influence of German journal-
ism. Many German writers, induding some academidans, seem
to feel that the substantive is the strongest and most impressive
part of speech. This tendency is foimd even in German police

Translator’s Note

xiii

reports.' Instead of saying that a man was arrested, they will
say that his arrest took place. This predilection for substantives
is a ^ent feature of Hitler’s style.

Here and there, amid his ponderous reflections, Hitler is sud-
denly shaken with rage. He casts off his intellectual baggage and
writes a speech, eloquent and vulgar.

* « *

Most of Hitler’s stylistic peculiarities represent no problem for
the translator. The mixed metaphors are just as mixed in one
language as in the other. A lapse of grammatical logic can occur
in any language. An English-language Hitler might be just as
redundant as the German one; a half-educated writer, without
clear ideas, generally feels that to say a thing only once is rather
slight.

There are, however, certain traits of Hitler’s style that are
peculiarly German and do present a problem in translation.
Chief among these are the length of the sentences, the substan-
tives, and the German particles.

A translation must not necessarily be good English, but it
must be English such as some sort of English author — in this
case, let us say, a poor one — might write. On the other hand,
it would be wrong to make Hitler an English-speaking rabble-
rouser, because his very style is necessarily German.

No non-German would write such labyrinthine sentences. The
translator’s task — often a feat of tightrope-walking — is to
render the ponderousness and even convey a German flavor,
without writing German-American. In general I have cut down
the sentences only when the length made them unintelligible in
English. (The German language with its cases and genders does
enable the reader to find his way through tangles which in a
non-inflected language would be inextricable.) Contrary to the
general opinion, the German text contains only one*or two sen-
tences that make no sense at first reading.

The substantives are a different matter. Here it has been

xiv

Translator’s Note

necessary to make greater changes, because in many cases the
use of verbal nouns is simply incompatible with the English lan-
guage. No pedant, no demagogue, no police clerk writes^that
way. I have used the construction where it seemed conceivable
in English, elsewhere reluctantly abandoned it. German stylists
may say that Hitler’s piling up of substantives is bad German,
but the fact remains that numerous German writers do the same
thing, while this failing is almost non-existent in English.

In approaching Hitler’s use of particles, it must be remembered
that he was at home in the Lower Bavarian dialect. Even with-
out the dialect, much German prose, some not of the worst
quality, abounds in these useless little words: wohl^ ja, denn,
sckon, noch, eigerUlich, etc. The South Germans are especially
addicted to them, and half of Hitler’s sentences are positively
clogged with particles, not to mention such private favorites as
besonders and damds which he strews about quite needlessly.
His particles even have a certain political significance, for in the
petit bourgeois mind they are, like carved furniture, an embodi-
ment of the home-grown German virtues, while their avoidance
is viewed with suspicion as foreign and modernistic. Unfortu-
nately, they must largely be sacrificed in translation. There are
no English equivalents, and an attempt to translate them results
in something like the language of the Katzenjammer Kids.
Sometimes, however, it is possible to give a similar impression
of wordiness by other means.

* * *

The translation follows the first edition. The more interesting
changes made in later German editions have been indicated in
the notes. Where Hitler’s formulations challenge the reader’s
credulity, I have quoted the German original in the notes.
Seemg is believing.

INTRODUCTION..

For years Mein Kampf stood as proof of the blindness and
complacency of the world. For in its pages Hitler announced —
long before he came to power — a program of blood and terror
in a self-revelation of such overwhelming frankness that few
among its readers had the courage to believe it. Once again jt
was demonstrated th at there w^ no mprg ' effecti ye_meth^ of
con cealment than t^^e-feg oadest _pubIkity.

Mein Kampf was written in white-hot hatred. But this hatred
was aimed, not at the author’s enemies, but at his supposed
friends. The book is an oratorical denunciation of collaborators
who largely shared the political aim of the author, but refused
to accept his methods.

As the discussion goes on, the tone of the debate grows louder
and more impassioned. For to Hitler the only principle which
really counts is his claim to supreme leadership, and when this
claim is disputed by people whom, in his loveless soul, he secretly
despises, he is driven half mad with hatred.

It was in 1922 that Hitler first planned a small pamphlet the
title of which was to be Eine Abrechnung (‘Settling Accounts’).
He wanted to prove that the leaders of the German right wing
parties were wrong in their methods, lacked strength, imagina-
tion, and political judgment, and were bound to fail. He dis-
cussed the booklet at length with his close friends, Rudolf Hess
and Dietrich Eckart. Eckart himself had compiled a little book
from his talks with Hitler. Its title was Bolshevism from Moses
to Lenin, and it attempted to prove that Judaism was the great
destructive force which had ruined Western civilization. The
book was brilliantly written, and, although it claimed to express
Hitler’s ideas, these were expounded in a way which was more
Eckart’s than Hitler’s.

Hitler must have realized the growing necessity of stating his
own principles in his own language, in a more definite, more

xvi

Introduction

authoritative form. He probably had an uneasy feeling that
some of his followers, although admiring him as an orator^ did
not believe him to be a clear or profound thinker. People whom
he himself regarded as his inferiors endeavored to outline what
they called the fundamental principles of his own party, and
quarreled about these principles over the head of their leader.

Gottfried Feder, who had collaborated m drafting the party’s
program, and who considered himself the master-mind of the
whole movement, wrote a booklet about the aims of Naziism.
In it he insisted strongly on his own particular ideas, and laid
stress on economic principles that were distinctly socialistic,
such as abolition of capital interest. At the same time, Alfred
Rosenberg, Hitler’s mentor, published an equally ‘authentic’
comment on the party aims difiering sharply from Feder’s.
Rosenberg insisted on certain racial and sociological aspects of
the issue, such as the inequality of men, and the superiority of
the Nordic or Aryan type.

True, Feder and Rosenberg had one thing in common: both
attacked the Jews. But their points of view were entirely differ-
ent. To Feder, the Jews were profiteers in a vicious economic
s)rstem. To Rosenberg, they were the creators of the modern
world, the standard-bearers of the twentieth century and of all
that he and his fellows hated: freedom of speech and press,
egalitarian justice, representative government, free access of
every citizen to all professions and public services without dis-
crimination of birth, wealth, or religion. The decisive factor in
human society was, to Rosenberg, the outstanding personality,
the great lone wolf, the creative superman. This idea was not
^new, but it well fitted Hitler’s purpose, for, at that time, demo-
cratic and dictatorial tendencies still struggled side by sidp in
the Nazi movement, and men like Feder claimed to be Hitler’s
equals.

To settle, these disturbing quanels between his followers, to
strengthen his own authority as leader and idea-man of his
movement. Hitler decided to broaden the scope of his projected
book,, and to add the story of his life, brushing up ‘to heroic size

Introduction 'brvii

the picture of his inglorious youth, and picturing hintself as one
whose boyhood had been marred by poverty, but who had risen
by his own strength and intelligence to be the leader of a great
political party, thus making himself a symbol of the humiliated
but unconquerable German people and a victim of the same
social forces which he was then attacking.

But the main aim of his book was to show that he was the
only foimder and builder of the National Socialist movement. He
never mentions the name of Captain Ernst Roehm, who con-
tributed at least as much as himself to the rise of the party.
He says little about Anton Drexler, the real founder of the move-
ment. He makes no mention of Hermann Esser and gives no
idea of the indispensable role played by Julius Streicher. His
only reference to Gregor Strasser, his most powerful rival for
the party leadership, is an obscure joke about his predilection
for card-playing. Strasser is never mentioned by name.

After the unsuccessful putsch of November, 1923, Hitler spent
about thirteen months in a so-called prison. There he wrote
most of what later became the first volume of his famous book.
He intended to caU it, ‘A Four and One-Half Year Struggle
against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice: Settling Accounts with
the Destroyers of the National Socialist Movement.’ His idea
was to tell the inside story of his putsch and its coUapse. But
then he dropped this plan and the title lost its meaning. It seems
that one of his associates, Max Amann, had the idea of simply
calling the whole Mein K ampJ (‘My Struggle’). The subtitle of
the first volume remained Eine Abrechmmg (‘ Settling Accounts’),
although it no longer made sense.

The first volume was dictated by the author to two men who
were in prison with him. One was Emil Maurice, a strong-arm
man not too well fitted for the job. Then came Rudolf Hess,
who had escaped to Austria, returned, was arrested, and went
to the same prison as his master. Together they finished the
first volume. Hess has often been called a disciple of Karl
Haushofer, the military geographer. No doubt Haushofer influ-
enced some parts of Mein Kampf, but it is misleading to represent

xviii

Introduction

him as Hitler’s guiding genius. The essential parts of the book
do not concern questions of foreign policy or military geography,
but of race, propaganda, and political education.

The first volume was published in the Ml of 1925^ It dis-
appointed many readers, who had expected a revelation or at
least a dramatic story, not a philosophy; ill-founded, undocu-
mented, and badly written. ‘Many’ readers, incidentally, should
not be t alf en too literally. It is true that Amann claimed at that
time to have sold twenty-three thousand copies during the first
year, but this is a very doubtful boast. The average party mem-
ber did not read the book, and among the leaders it was a com-
mon saying that Hitler was an extraordinary speaker, a great
leader, a political genius, but ‘it’s too bad he had to write that
silly book.’

The second edition of the first volume, and the second volume
from the beginning, were supervised by one Josef Cerny, at that
time staff member of the VSlkischer Beohachter, the party paper.
The text became somewhat more civilized. The difference be-
tween the first edition and the later ones is not as great as is
often believed. The most important of these differences con-
cerns the structure of the Nazi Party. When Hitler published
the first edition of the first volume, the Nazi Party was stiU a
democratic organization which elected officials. Two years
later the ‘leader-principle,’ or dictatorship within the party,
was firmly established. Hitler had reached the goal for which
the whole book was written. The ‘unalterable’ program of the
party, the so-called twenty-five points, called for a ‘central parli-
ament’ as the highest authority of the future Nazi state. The
first edition of Mein Kampf had to accept this principle. The
second edition changed all that. From now on the party aim was
definitely set toward dictatorship.

The second volume came out in December, 1926, and was
read by even fewer people than the first; certainly by none out-
side the still small National Socialist Party. For some years
to come the book remained a financial burden on the shoulders
of Max Amann, Hitler’s business manager. Amann had been

Introduction

xix

appointed, in 1925, manager of the Franz Eher Verlag, the party’s
publishing house virtually owned by Hitler, and to this day
he his remained at the head of this source of Hitler’s private
fortune. He knew that Hitler needed financial resources in order
to control the party effectively; he saw it more clearly than Hitler
himself, who has no sense for business. Amann hoped that the
book would become a source of private revenue. Two or three
years before Hitler came to power, the sales of Mein Kampf
began to rise, and later they rose astronomically. Amann went
on printing the book from the same poor type, on the same
cheap paper as before. Everybody was forced to buy it. It was
presented as a gift to newly-wed couples, but the license fee
was doubled. Mein Kampf made Hitler rich . It became a
best-seUer second only to the Bible.

The book may well be called a_kind of satanic-Bihl^. To the
author — although he was sBfewdenoiIgh not to state it explicitly
himself, but to have it said by his spiritual adviser, Alfred Rosen-
berg — the belief in human equality is a Icind of hypnotic spell
exercised by world-conquering Judaism with the help of the
Christian Churches. Later the Jews invented the mass-seduction
of liberal democracy; in the last stage Marxism was their tool.
By preaching the principle of human equality, Judaism has at-
tempted to extirpate the feeling of pride from the soul of the Aryan
race, to rob them of their leadership. To give back to these noble]
races their former consciousness of superiority by inculcating
the principle that men are not equal is the theoretical purpose
of Mein Kampf.

Compared to the spirit of the book, the pragmatical parts are
of less importance. Nevertheless, they have aroused more in-
terest, for they are easier to understand. Foreign policies, blue-
prints for world conquests, prescriptions for alliances or wars —
most readers flung themselves upon these passages after the
author had become a leading actor on the world stage. But a
little reflection would show that in the pathless field of politics
you cannot foUow a schedule. When Hitler set down his plans
for a future foreign policy, he was a mere schemer. Adolf Hitler,

zz

Iktrodcction

the author of Mein Kampf, was not yet Adolf Hitler, the Fiihrer
of Germany; he lacked the ezperience, the responsibilities, the
knowledge. In fact, he was nothing more than an organist of
street fights, an impresario of mass meetings, the leader of a
virtually non-esdstent party, who shrewdly gambled with rival
leaders of similar unimportance.

The soundest appraisal of these utterances on foreign policy
was made by AdoH Hitler himself, in the course of a libel suit in
Munich, To a fat and bored judge, who, staring through gold-
rimmed spectacles, meditated whether to fine both parties five
hundred or a thousand marks, Adolf Hitler explained : ‘In political
life there is no such thing as principles of foreign policy. The
programmatic principles of my party are its doctrine on the
racial problem and its fight against pacifism and international-
ism. But foreign policy in itself is merely a means to an end.
In questions of foreign policy I shall never admit that I am tied
by anything.’ Nevertheless, Mein Kampf is packed with prin-
ciples of foreign policy, all of which have been taken more seri-
ously by others than by the author himself.

What gives Mein Kampf its terrific import is not the aims but
the methods. Whether Hitler proclaims war against Russia or
friendship with Britain, a crusade against the United States or a
plot with Japan, conquest by land or by sea, revolt against the
rich or the poor — all these plans and schemes mean nothing.
He has changed them again and again, because ‘in questions of
foreign policy I never shall admit that I am tied by anything.’
But the fact that all of his schemes, even his friendships, mean'
bloodshed (‘an alliance which does not imply the intention of
going to war would be meaningless’) — that is what gives this
foreign policy its sinister significance. Whether he speaks of
art, of education, of economics, he always sees blood. He does
not like a certain kind of artist or educator, and that will be^
reason enough to kill them. ‘We shall do away with them ra,di-i
caUy, this is his typical slogan. The light-heartedness with whichl
he threatens murder at the slightest provocation is perhaps even|
more frightful than the threats themselves.

Introduction

Al

That such a man could go so far toward realizing his ambitions,
and — above all — could find millions of willing tools and
helpers; that is a phenomenon the world will ponder for cen-
turies to come. ■ ■'

Konrad Heiden

MEIN KAMPF

VOLUME

ONE

A RECKONING

CHAPTER

i

In the House of My Parents

T

JLoday it seems to me p roviden tial jhat
Fate should have chosen Braunau on the Inn as my birthplace.
For this little town lies on the boundary between two German
states which we of the younger generation at least have made it
our life work to reunite by every means at our disposal.

German-Austria must return to the great German mother
country, and not because of any economic considerations. No,
and again no: even if such a union were unimportant from an
economic point of view; yes, even if it were harmful, it must
nevertheless take place. One blood demands one Reich. Never
will the German nation possess the moral right to engage in
colonial politics until, at least, it embraces its own sons within a
single state. Only when the Reich borders include the very last
German, but can no longer guarantee his daily bread, will the
moral right to acquire foreign soil arise from the distress of our
own people. Their sword will become our plow, and from the
tears of war the daily bread of future generations will grow.
And so this little city on the border seems to me the symbol of a
great mission. And in another respect as well, it looms as an
\aidaonkiojLto the present day. More than a hundred years ago,
this insignificant place had the distinction of being immortalized
in the annals at least of German history, for it was the scene of a
tragic catastrophe which gripped the entire German nation. At

4

Mein Kampe

the time of. our fatherland’s deepest humiliation, Johannes Palm ^
of Nuremberg, burgher, bookseller, uncompromising nationalist
and French hater, died there for the Germany which he lovfed so
passionately even in her misfortune. He had stubbornly refused
to denoimce his accomplices, who were in fact his superiors. In
this he resembled Leo Schlageter.^ And like him, he was de-
nounced to the French by a representative of his government.
An Augsburg police chief won this unenviab le fame, thus furnish-
ing an example for our modern German officials in Herr Sever-
ing’s ® Reich.

In this little town on the Inn, gilded by the rays of German
martyrdom. Bavarian by blood, technically Austrian,^ lived my
parents in the late eighties of the past century; my father a
dutiful civil servant, my mother ^ving all her being to the house-
hold, and devoted above all to us children in eternal, loving care.
Little remains in my memory of this period, for after a few years
my father had to leave the little border city be had learned to
love, moving down the Inn to take a new position in Passau, that
is, in Germany proper.

In those days constant moving was the lot of an Austrian cus-
toms official. A short time later, my father was sent t p Linz , and
there he was finally pensioned. Yet, indeed, this was not to
mean ‘rest’ for the old gentleman. In his younger days, as the
son of a poor cottager, he couldn’t bear to stay at home. Before

1 Johann Philipp Palm was executed in 1806 by the French garrison of
Nuremberg for publishing a pamphlet attacking Napoleon.

“ A free corps leader who performed acts of sabotage against the French
occupation authorities in the Ruhr. In the summer of 1923 he was cap-
tured by the French authorities, court-martialed and shot.

J With brief interruptions the Social Democrat Carl Severing was Prussian
Minister of the Interior from 1920 unth 1932, when Chancellor Von Papen
dissolved the Prussian government. As Minister of the Interior he was in
charge of the Prussian police. This, coupled with the fact that he successfully
combated thf influence of the Rightist secret leagues in the Reichswehr
earned him the special hatred of the Nazis. ’

j 4 Braunau on the Inn, in Upper Austria, directly across from the German
‘(Bavarian) border.

'The Little Ringleader

5

he was even thirteen, the little boy laced his tiny knapsack and
ran away from his home in the Waldviertel.^ Despite the at-
temp'ts of ‘experienced’ villagers to dissuade him, he made his
way to Vienna, there to learn a trade. This was in the fifties of
the past century. A desperate decision, to take to the road with
only three gulden for travel money, and plunge into the un-
known. By the time the thirteen-year-old grew to be seventeen,
he had passed his apprentice’s examination, but he was not yet
content. On the contrary. The long period of hardship, endless
misery, and suffering he had gone through strengthened his de-
termination to give up his trade and become ‘something better.’
Formerly the poor boy had regarded the priest as the embodi-
ment of all humanly attainable heights: now in the big city,
which had so greatly widened his perspective, it was the rank of
civil servant. With all the tenacity of a young man whom suffer-
ing and care had made ‘ old’ while still half a child, the seventeen-
year-old climg to his new decision — he did enter the civil service.
And after nearly twenty-three years, I believe, he reached his
goal. Thus he seemed to have fulfilled a vow which he had made
as a poor boy: that he would not return to his beloved native
village until he had made something of himself.

His goal was achieved; but no one in the village could remember
the little boy of former days, and to him the village had grown
strange.

When finally, at the age of fifty-six, he went into retirement,
he could not bear to spend a single day of his leisure in idleness.
Near the Upper Austrian market village of Lambach he bought
a farm, which he worked himself, and thus, in the circuit of a
long and industrious life, returned to the origins of his forefathers.

It was at this time that the first ideals took shape in my breast.
AU my playing about in the open, the long walk to school, and
particularly my association with extremely ‘husky’ boys, which
sometimes caused my mother bitter anguish, made me the very
opposite of a stay-at-home. And though at that time I scarcely

^ Waldviertel, the mountainous section at the extreme west of Lower
Austria, north of the Danube.

6

Mein KampE

had any serious ideas as to the profession I should one day pursue,
my sympathies were in any case not in the direction of my father’s
career. I believe that even then my oratorical talent was being
devfeloped in the form of more or less violent arguments with my
schoolmates. I had become a little ringleader; at school I learned
easily and at that time very well, but was otherwise rather hard
to handle. Since in my free time I received singing lessons in the
cloister at Lambach, I had excellent opportimity to intoxicate
myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals.
As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village
priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most de-
sirable ideal. For a time, at least, this was the case. But since
my father, for understandable reason^^roved unable to appreci-
ate the oratorical talents of his pugna^us boy, or to draw from
them any favorable conclusions regarding the future of his off-
spring, he could, it goes without saying, achieve no understanding
for such youthful ideas. With concern he observed this conflict
of nature.

As it happened, my temporary aspiration for this profession
was in any case soon to vanish, making place for hopes more
suited to my temperament. Ruitifnaging through my father’s
library, I had come across various books of a military nature,
among them a popular edition of the Franco-German War of
1870-71.* It consisted of two issues of an illustrated periodical
from those years, which now became my favorite reading matter.
It was not long before the great heroic struggle had become my
greatest inner experience. From then on I became more and more
enthusiastic about everything that was in any way connected
with war or, for that matter, with soldiering.

But in another respect as well, this was to assume importance for
me. For the first time, though as yet in a confused form, the ques-
tion was forced upon my consciousness: Was there a difference
and if so what difference — between the Germans who fought
these hattlbs and other Germans? Why hadn’t Austria
part in this war; why hadn’t my father and all the others fought?

‘ Eine Volksausgdbe des deiOsch-franzosischen Krieges von 1870 - 71 .

bnoiCE OF Profession

7

Are we not the same as all other Germans?

Do we not aU belong together? This problem began to gnaw
at my little brain for the first time. I asked cautious questions
and with secret envy received the answer that not every German
was fortimate enough to belong to Bismarck’s Reich.

This was more than 1 could imderstand.

* * *

It was decided that I should go to high school.

From my whole nature, and to an even greater degree from my
temperament, my father believed he could draw the inference
that the humanistic Gymnasium ^ would represent a conflict with
my talents. A Realschule seemed to him more suitable. In this
opinion he was especially strengthened by my obvious aptitude
for drawing; a subject which in his opinion was neglected in the
Austrian Gymnasiums. Another factor may have been his own
laborious career which made humanistic study seem impractical
in his eyes, and therefore less desirable. It was his basic opinion
and intention® that, like himself, his son would and must be-
come a civil servant. It was only natural that the hardships of
his youth should enhance his subsequent achievement in his eyes,
particularly since it resulted exclusively from his own energy and
iron dilig^^e. It was the pride of the self-made man which made
him want his son to rise to the same position in life, or, of course,
even higher if possible, especially since, by his own industrious
life, he thought he would be able to facilitate his child’s develop-
ment so greatly.

It was simply inconceivable to him that I might reject what

1 The Gymnasium more or less corresponds to our Z/atin school, the Real-
schule to our technical high school. The former, with its emphasis on the
liberal arts, enjoyed greater social prestige than the Realschule before the
War of 1914.

“The German is ‘Willettsmeinung,’ an extraordinary word, perhaps
Hitler’s own invention. Literal translation would be ‘opinion of the will.’

8

Mein Kampe

bad become the content of his whole life. Consequently, my
father’s decision was simple, definite, and clear; in his own eyes I
mean, of course. Finally, a whole lifetime spent in the bitter
struggle for existence had given him a domineering nature, and
it would have seemed intolerable to him to leave the final decision
in such matters to an inexperienced boy, having as yet no sense
of responsibility. Moreover, this would have seemed a sinful and
reprehensible weakness in the exercise of his proper parental
authority and responsibility for the future life of his child, and,
as such, absolutely incompatible with his concept of duty. ,

And yet things were to turn out differently.

Then barely eleven years old, I was forced into opposition for
the first time in my life. Hard and determined as my father
might be in putting through plans and purposes once conceived,
his son was just as persistent and recalcitrant in rejecting an idea
which appealed to him not at all, or in any case very little,
j I did not want to become a civil servant.

Neither persuasion nor 'serious’ arguments made any im-
pression on my resistance, I did not want to be a civil servant,
no, and again no. All attempts on my father’s part to inspire
me with love or pleasure in this profession by stories from his
own life accomplished the exact opposite. I yawned and grew
sick to my stomach at the thought of sitting m an office, deprived
of my liberty; ceasing to be master of my own time and being
compelled to force the content of a whole life into blanks that had
, to be fiUed out.^

And what thoughts could this prospect arouse in a boy who in
reality was really anything but ‘good’ in the usual sense of the
word? School work was ridiculously easy, leaving me so much
free time that the sun saw more of me than my room. When
today my political opponents direct their loving attention to the
examination of my life, following it back to those childhood days,
and discover at last to their relief what intolerable pranks this
‘Hitler’ played even in his youth, I thank Heaven that a portion

* ‘sondern in auszufiUlende Formulare dm InkaU dnes ganzen Lehens
zwdngm zu mUssen.’

*A Civil Servant — Never!

9

of the memories of those happy days still remains with me.
Woods and meadows were then the battlefields on which the
‘conflicts’ which exist ever3Mvhere in life were decided.

In this respect my attendance at the Realschule, which now
commenced, made little difference.

But now, to be sure, there was a new conflict to be fought out.

As long as my father’s intention of making me a civil servant
encountered only my theoretical distaste for the profession, the
conflict was bearable. Thus far, I had to some extent been able
to keep my private opinions to myself; I did not always have to
conttadict him immediately. My own firm determination never
to become a civil servant sufficed to give me complete inner peace.
And this decision in me was immutable. The problem became
more difficult when I developed a plan of my own in opposition
to my father’s. And this occurred at the early age of twelve.
How it happened, I myself do not know, but one day it became
clear to me that I would become a painter, an artist. There was
no doubt as to my talent for drawing; it had been one of my
father’s reasons for sending me to the Realschule, but never in all
the world would it have occurred to him to give me professional
training in this direction. On the contrary. When for the first
time, after once again rejecting my father’s favorite notion, I was
asked what I myself wanted to be, and I rather abruptly blurted
out the decision I had meanwhile made, my father for the moment
was struck speechless.

‘Painter? Artist?’

He doubted my sanity, or perhaps he thought he had heard
wrong or misunderstood me. But when he was clear on the sub-
ject, and particularly after he felt the seriousness of my intention,
he opposed it with aU the determination of his nature. His de-
cision was extremely simple, for any consideration of what
abilities I might really have was simply out of the question.

‘Artist, no, never as long as I live!’ But since his son, among
various other qualities, had apparently inherited* his father’s
stubbornness, the same answer came back at him. Except, of
course, that it was in the opposite sense.

10

Mein Kampf

And thus the situation remained on both sides. My father did
not depart from his ‘Never!’ And I intensified my ‘Oh, yes!’

The consequences, indeed, were none too pleasant. The old
mart grew embittered, and, much as I loved him, so did I. My
father forbade me to nourish the slightest hope of ever being al-
lowed to study art. I went one step further and declared tliat if
that was the case T would stop studying altogether. As a result
of such ‘pronouncements,’ of course, I drew the short end; the
old man began the relentless enforcement of his authority. In the
future, therefore, I was silent, but transformed my threat into
reality. I thought that once my father saw how little progress I
was makin g at the Realschule, he would let me devote myself to
my dream, whether he liked it or not.

I do not know whether this calculation was correct. For the
moment only one thing was certain ; my obvious lack of success
at school. What gave me pleasure I learned, especially every-
thing which, in my opinion, I should later need as a painter.
What seemed to me unimportant in this respect or was otherwise
unattractive to me, I sabotaged completely. My report cards at
this time, depending on the subject and my estimation of it,
showed nothing but extremes. Side by side with ‘laudable’ and
-‘excellent,’ stood ‘adequate’ or even ‘inadequate.’ By far my
best accomplishments were in geography and even more so in
history. These were my favorite subjects, in which I led the
class.

If now, after so many years, I examine the results of this period,
I regard two outstanding facts as particularly sig nifi cant-

First: I became a nationalist}

Second; I learned to understand and grasp the meaning of history.

Old Austria was a ‘state of nationalities.’

‘ Hitler’s early nationalism had, of course, nothing to do with Austrian
patriotism, but was the Pan-Germanism of the Los-von-Rom (Away-from-
Rome) movement founded by Ritter Georg von Schonerer. It stood for
union of Germany with the German parts of Austria and must be distin-
guished from the Pan-German movement of Germany, which was an out-
and-out conspiracy for German world domination. Schonerer’s movement
was strongly anti-Semitic.

The German Ostmark 11

By and large, a subject of the German Reich, at that time at
least, was absolutely unable to grasp the significance of this fact
for the life of the individual in such a state. After the great
victorious campaign of the heroic armies in the Franco-German
War, people had gradually lost interest in the Germans living
abroad; some could not, while others were unable to appreciate
their importance.^ Especially with regard to the German-
Austrians, the degenerate dvmasty was only too frequently
confused with the people, which at the core was robust and
healthy.

\\Tiat they failed to appreciate was that, unless the German in
Austria had really been of the best blood, he would never have
had the power to set his stamp on a nation of fiftj'-two million
souls to such a degree that, even in Germany, the erroneous
opinion could arise that Austria was a German state. This was
an absurdity fraught with the direst consequences, and yet a
glowing testimonial to the ten million Germans in the Osfmark.-
Only a handful of Germans in the Reich had the slightest con-
ception of the eternal and merciless struggle for the German
language, German schools, an^^ a German way of life. Only to-
day, when the same deplorable misery is forced on many millions
of Germans from the Reich, who under foreign rule dream of
their common fatherland and strive, amid their longing, at least
to preserve their holy right to their mother tongue, do wider
circles understand what it means to be forced to fight for one’s
nationality. Today perhaps some can appreciate the greatness of
the Germans in the Reich’s old Ostmark, who, with no one but
themselves to depend on, for centuries protected the Reich against
incursions from the East, and finally carried on an exhausting
guerrilla warfare to maintain the German language frontier, at a

* ‘zum Teil dieses auch gar nichl mekr zu wiirdigen vermocht oder uvlU auch
nicht gekonnt.’

® Mark, established by Charlemagne as a buffer against the

Avars. Later called Austria. The name was revived by nineteenth-century
nationalists who looked back with longing at the unity and strength of the
old empire.

12

Mein Kampf

time when the Reich was highly interested in colonies, but not
in its own flesh and blood at its very doorstep.

As everywhere and always, in every struggle, there were, in
tbds fight for the language in old Austria, three strata;

The fighters, the lukewarm, and the traitors.

This sifting process began at school. For the remarkable fact
about the language struggle is that its waves strike hardest per-
haps in the school, since it is the seed-bed of the coming genera-
tion. It is a struggle for the soul of the child, and to the child its
first appeal is addressed:

‘German boy, do not forget you are a German,’ and, ‘Little
girl, remember that you are to become a German mother.’

Anyone who knows the soul of youth will be able to understand
that it is they who lend ear most joyfully to such a battle-cry.
They carry on this struggle in hundreds of forms, in their own
way and with their own weapons. They refuse to sing un-
German songs. The more anyone tries to alienate them from
German heroic grandeur, the wilder becomes their enthusiasm:
they go hungry to save pennies for the grown-ups' battle fund;
their ears are amazingly sensitive to un-German teachers, and at
the same time they are incredibly resistant; they wear the for-
bidden insignia of their own nationality and are happy to be
punished or even beaten for it. Thus, on a small scale they are a
faithful reflection of the adults, except that often their convic-
tions are better and more honest.

I, too, while still comparatively young, had an opportunity to
take part in the struggle of nationalities in old Austria. Col-
lections were taken for the Siidmark ^ and the school association;
we emphasized our convictions by wearing corn-flowers ^ and red,
black, and gold colors; ‘Heil’ was our greeting, and instead of the

1 Siidmark. Another term for Austria. Apparently devised in imitation
of the old imperial Marks by the Verdnfiir Deuischlum im Atisland, founded
in 1881 to defend the endangered nationality of Germans in the border
territories.

The corn-flower was the emblem' of Germans loyal to the imperial House
of Hohenzollern and of the Austrian Pan-Germans.

The Struggle for Germanism

13

imperial anthem we sang ‘Deutschland uber Alles,’ despite warn-
ings and punishments. In this way the child received political
training in a period when as a rule the subject of a so-called na-
tional state knew little more of his nationality than its language.
It goes without saying that even then I was not among the luke-
warm. In a short time I had become a fanatical ‘German*
Nationalist/ though the term was not identical with our present'
party concept.

This development in me made rapid progress; by the time I
was fifteen I understood the difference between djmastic ‘patriot-
ism’ and folkish ^ ‘nationalism'-, and even then I was interested
only in the latter.

For anyone who has never taken the trouble to study the inner
conditions of the Habsburg monarchy, such a process may not
be entirely understandable. In this country the instruction in
world history had to provide the germ for this development,
since to all intents and purposes there is no such thing as a
specifically Austrian history. The destiny of this state is so much
bound up with the life and development of all the Germans that
a separation of historj'- into German and Austrian does not seem
conceivable. Indeed, when at length Germany began to divide
into two spheres of power, this division itself became German
history.

The insignia of former imperial glory, preserved in Vienna, still
seem to cast a magic spell, they stand as a pledge that these two-
fold destinies are eternally one.

The elemental cry of the German-Austrian people for union
^sdth the German mother country, that arose in the days when the
Habsburg state was collapsing, was the result of a longing that
slumbered in the heart of the entire people — a longing to return
to the never-forgotten ancestral home. But this would be in-

* VolMsch. The word first appeared in nationalist literature about 1875
and is merely a Germanization of ‘nationalist.’ Where possiblff the national-
ists avoided the use of foreign words. Since 1900 it has been in wide use
among nationalist circles, from the Pan-German League down to the Na-
tional Socialists.

Mehj Kampt

fas^SSssHis S tiffi bSstoritsl fidncaticni of tlifi individual Ge nuat i-
Austi^ii iad not given -nsR to so general a l onging - In it lies a ,
veil vliicb never grovs dry; 'windi, e^edaBy in times of forget-
fidness. transcends all momentary prosperity and by constant
reminders of tiie past vMspers softly of a nev future.

Instniction in vorld history in the so-called high schools is even
todav in a teiy soix)' condition. Fev teachers understand that
the aim of siudving history can never be to learn historical dates
and events b}' heart and redte them hy rote: that vhat matters is
not vhether the child Lnovs tvactly when this or that battle vas
fono-ht, vhen a general vras bom. or even vhen a monarch ( usually
a ven' insimiif cant one came into the crovn of his forefathers.
Xo. by the Lving God. this vero’ unimportant.

To Team' histor>' mean- tj seel: and hnd the forces vhich
are the causes leadln'i to those e.It'.G vhich ve subsequently per-
ceive as historical events.

'Jlie art of reading as of learning is this: io rciain the essentwl,
to forget the riOV-cz:eniii'..

Perhaps it aflect-.-d my whole later life that good fortune sent
me a histor}- teacher who was one of the few to observe this
prindple in teaching and ercamining. Dr. Leopold Potsch, my
professor at the ReaJschule in Linz, embodied this requirement to
an ideal degree. This old gentleman's manner was as kind as it
was determined, his dazzling eloquence not only held us sp>eU-
bound but actually carried us away. Even today I think back
with gentle emotion on this gray-haired man who, by the fire of
Jiis narratives sometimes made us forget the present: who, as if
by enchantment, carried us into past times and, out of the millen-
nial veils of mist, molded drj' historical memories into living
reality. On such occasions we sat there, often aflame with en-
thusiasm., and sometimes even, moved to tears.

WTiat made our good fortune all the greater was that this
teacher knew how to illuminate the past by examples from the
present, and how from the past to draw inferences for the present.
As a result he had more understanding than anyone else for all
the daily problems which then held us breathless. He used our

15

'enthusiasm for History

budding nationalistic fanaticism as a means of edjicating us,
frequently appealing to our sense of national honor. By this
alone he was able to discipline us little ruffians more easily than
would have been possible by any other means.

This teacher made history my favorite subject.

And indeed, though he had no such intention, it was then that
I became a little revolutionary.

For w'ho could have studied German history under such a
teacher without becoming an enemy of the state which, through
its ruling house, exerted so disastrous an influence on the destinies
of the nation?

And who could retain his loyalty to a dynasty which in past
and present betrayed the needs of the German people again and
again for shameless private advantage?

Did we not know, even as little boys, that this Austrian state?
had and could have no love for us Germans? J

Our historical knowledge of the works of the House of Habs-
burg was reinforced by our daily experience. In the north and
south the poison of foreign nations gnawed at the body of our
nationality, and even Vienna was visibly becoming more and
more of an un-German city. The Royal House Czechized wher-
ever possible, and it was the hand of the goddess of eternal jus-
tice and inexorable retribution which caused Archduke Francis
Ferdinand, the most mortal enemy of Austrian-Germanism, to
fall by the bullets which he himself had helped to mold. For
had he not been the patron of Austria’s Slavization from
above!

Immense were the burdens which the German people were ex-
pected to bear, inconceivable their sacrifices in taxes and blood,
and yet anyone who was not totally blind was bound to recognize
that aU this would be in vain. What pained us most was the fact
that this entire system was morally whitewashed by the alliance
with Germany, with the result that the slow extermination of
Germanism in the old monarchy was in a certain sensfi sanctioned
by Germany itself. The Habsburg hypocrisy, which enabled the
Austr ian rulers to Create the outward appearance that Austria

16

Mein Kampf'

was a German state, raised the hatred toward this house to flam-
ing indignation and at the same time — contempt.

Only in the Reich itself, the men who even then were called to
power saw nothing of all this. As though stricken with blindness,
they lived by the side of a corpse, and in the symptoms of rotten-
ness saw only the signs of ‘new’ life,

The unholy alliance of the young Reich and the Austrian sham
state contained the germ of the subsequent World War and of
the collapse as well.

In the course of this book I shall have occasion to take up this
problem at length. Here it suffices to state that even in my earli-
est youth I came to the basic insight which never left me, but
only became more profound:

T]mt Germanism could be safeguarded only by the destruction of
Austria, and, furthermore, that national sentiment is in no sense
identical with dynastic patriotism; that above all the House of Habs-
, burg W05 destined to be the misfortune of the German nation. .

I Even then I had drawn the consequences from this realization:
; ardent love for my German-Austrian homeland, deep ^tred for
' the Austrian state.

* * *

The habit of historical thinking which I thus learned in school
has never left me in the intervening years. To an ever-increasing
extent world history became for me an inexhaustible source of
understanding for the historical events of the present; in other
words, for politics. I do not want to ‘learn’ it, I want it to in- 1
struct me.

^ Thus, at an early age, I had become a political ‘ revolutionary,’
^d I became an artistic revolutionary at an equally early age.'

The provincial capital of Upper Austria had at that time a
theater which was, relatively speaking, not bad. Pretty much of
everything was produced. At the age of twelve I saw Wilhelm
fellJoT the first time, and a few months later my first opera.

17

Veneration oe Wagner

Lohengrin. I was captivated at once. My youthful enthusiasm
for the master of Bayreuth knew no bounds. Again and again I
was drawn to his works, and it still seems to me especially fortu-
nate that the modest provincial performance left me open to an
intensified experience later on.

All this, particularly after I had outgrown my adolescence
(which in my case was an especially painful process), reinforced
my profound distaste for the profession which my father had
chosen for me. ily conviction grew stronger and stronger that I
would never be happy as a civil servant. The fact that by this
time my gift for drawing had been recognized at the Realschule
made my determination all the firmer.

Neither pleas nor threats could change it one bit.

I wanted to become a painter and no power in the world could
make me a civil servant.

Yet, strange as it may seem, with the passing years I became
more and more interested in architecture.

At that time I regarded this as a natural complement to my
gift as a painter, and only rejoiced inwardly at the extension of
my artistic scope.

I did not suspect that things would turn out differently.

* * *

The question of my profession was to be decided more quickly
than I had previously expected.

In my thirteenth year I suddenly lost my father. A stroke of
apoplexy felled the old gentleman who was otherwise so hale,
thus painlessly ending his earthly pilgrimage, plunging us all into
the depths of grief. His most ardent desire had been to help his
son forge his career, thus preserving him from his own bitter
experience. In this, to all appearances, he had not succeeded.
But, though unwittingly, he had sown the seed for a futuie which
at that time neither he nor I would have comprehended.

For the moment there was no outw'ard change.

18

Mein Kampe

My mother, to be sure, felt obliged to continue my education
in accordance with my father’s wish; in other words, to have me
study for the civil servant’s career. I, for my part, was more than
ever determined absolutely not to undertake this career. In pro-
portion as my schooling departed from my ideal in subject mat-
ter and curriculum, I became more indifferent at heart. Then
suddenly an illness came to my help and in a few weeks decided
my future and the eternal domestic quarrel. As a result of my
serious lung ailment, a physician advised my mother in most
urgent terms never to send me into an office. My attendance at
the Realschule had furthermore to be interrupted for at least a
year. The goal for which I had so long silently yearned, for which
I had always fought, had through this event suddenly become
reality almost of its own accord.

Concerned over my illness, my mother finally consented to
take me out of the Realschule and let me attend the Academy.

- These were the happiest days of my life and seemed to me al-
most a dream; and a mere dream it was to remain. Two years
later, the death of my mother put a sudden end to aU my high-
flown plans.

It was the conclusion of a long and painful illness which from
the beginning left little hope of recovery. Yet it was a dreadful
blow, particularly for me. I had honored my father, but my
mother I had loved.

Poverty and hard reality now compelled me to take a quick
decision. What little my father had left had been largely ex-
hausted by my mother’s grave illness; the orphan’s pension to
which I was entitled was not enough for me even to live on, and
so I was faced with the problem of somehow making my own
living.

In my hand a suitcase full of clothes and underwear; in my
heart an indomitable will, I journeyed to Vienna. I, too, hoped
to wrest from Fate what my father had accomplished fifty years
before; I, too, wanted to become ‘something’ — but on no ac-
count a civil servant.

CHAPTER

II

Years of Study and Suffering in Vienna

W. my mother died, Fate, at least in
one respect, had made its decisions.

In the last months of her sickness, I had gone to Vienna to take
the entrance examination for the Academy. I had set out with a
pile of drawings, convinced that it would be child’s play to pass
the examination. At the Realschule I had been by far the best in
my class at drawing, and since then my ability had developed
amazingly; my own satisfaction caused me to take a joyful pride
in hoping for the best.

Yet sometimes a drop of bitterness put in its appearance: my
talent for painting seemed to be excelled by my talent for draw-
ing, especially in almost all fields of architecture. At the same
time my interest in architecture as such increased steadily, and
this development was accelerated after a two weeks’ trip to
Vienna which I took when not yet sixteen. The purpose of my
trip was to study the picture gallery in the Court Lluseum, but I
had eyes for scarcely anything but the Museum itself. From
morning until late at night, I ran from one object of interest to
another, but it was always the buildings which held my primary
interest. For hours I could stand in front of the Opera, for hours
I could gaze at the Parliament; the whole Ring Boulevard seemed
to me like an enchantment out of The Tkousand-and-One-Nights,

Now I was in the fair city for the second time, waiting with
burning impatience, but also with confident self-assurance, for

20

Mein Kampe

the resijlt of my entrance examination. I was so convinced that
I would be successful that when I received my rejection, it struck
me as a bolt from the blue. Yet that is what happened. When I
presented myself to the rector, requesting an explanation for my
non-acceptance at the Academy’s school of painting, that gentle-
man assured me that the drawings I had submitted incontrover-
tibly showed my unfitness for painting, and that my ability
obviously lay in the field of architecture; for me, he said, the
Academy’s school of painting was out of the question, the place
for me was the School of Architecture. It was incomprehensible
to him that I ‘had never attended an architectural school or re-
ceived any other training in architecture. Downcast, I left von
Hansen’s * magnificent building on the Schillerplatz, for the first
time in my young life at odds with myself. For what I had just
heard about my abilities seemed like a lightning flash, suddenly
revealing a conflict with which I had long been afflicted, although
until then I had no clear conception of its why and wherefore.

In a few days I myself knew that I should some day become an
architect.

To be sure, it was an incredibly hard road; for the studies I had
neglected out of spite at the Realschule were sorely needed. One
could not attend the Academy’s architectural school without
having attended the building school at the Technik, and the latter
required a high-school degree. I had none of all this. The fulfill-
ment of my artistic dream seemed physically impossible.

When after the death of my mother I went to Vienna for the
third time, to remain for many years, the time which had mean-
while elapsed had restored my calm and determination. My old
defiance had come back to me and my goal was now clear and
definite before my eyes. I wanted to become an architect, and
ob_stac^ do_i^exisUabejun£fldgin^^ but only to be broken.
I was deterimnSTtoovercome theseob^es, keying before my

‘Theophil von Hansen (1813-1891), Danish architect, built many of
Vienna s best-known buildings, including the Academy of Art, th» Stock
Ex^np, and the Reichsrat (parliament). His work was in the historical,
archaeological style of the period.

Five Yeaks of Miserv

21

€yes the image of my father, who had started out as the child of a
village shoemaker, and risen by his own efforts to be a govern-
ment ofl&dal. I had a better foundation to build on, and hence
my possibilities in the struggle were easier, and what then seetoed
to be the harshness of Fate, I praise today as wisdom and Provi-
dence. While the Goddess of Suffering took me in her arms, often
threatening to crush me, my will to resistance grew, and in the
end this will was victorious.

I owe it to that period that I grew hard and am stUl capable of
being hard. And even more, I exalt it for tearing me away from
the hollowness of comfortable life; for drawing ’the mother’s
darling out of his soft downy bed and giving him ‘Dame Care’
for a new mother; for hurling me, despite all resistance, into a
world of misery and poverty, thus ma king me acquainted with
those for whom I was later to fight.

* * *

In this period my eyes were opened to two menaces of which I
had previously scarcely known the names, and whose terrible
importance for the existence of the German people I certainly did
not understand: Marxism and Jewry.

To me Vienna, the city which, to so many, is the epitome of
innocent pleasure, a festive playground for merrymakers, repre-
sents, I am sorry to say, merely the living memory of the saddest
period of my life.

Even today this city can arouse in me nothing but the most
dismal thoughts. For me the name of this Phaeacian city ’ repre-
sents five years of hardship and misery. Five years in which I
was forced to earn a living, first as a day laborer, then as a small
painter; a truly meager living which never sufficed to appease

even my daily hunger. Hunger was then my faithful bodyguard;

•

‘ Phaeacian city. The allusion to the happy isle of the Phaeacians is
more popular in Germany than in English-speaking countries. Hitler’s use
of it does not mean that he has read the Odyssey.

22

Mein Kampf''

he never left me for a moment and partook of all I had, share
and share alike. Every book I acquired aroused his interest, a
visit to the Opera prompted his attentions for days at a time ; my
life was a continuous struggle with this pitiless friend. And yet
during this time I studied as never before. Aside from my archi-
tecture and my rare visits to the Opera, paid for in hunger, I had
but one pleasure: my books.

■ At that timp. I read enormously and thoroughly. All the free
time my work left me was employed in my studies. In this way I
forged in a few years’ time the foundations of a knowledge from
jyhich I still draw nourishment today.

And even more than this;

In this period there took shape within me a world picture and
a philosophy which became the granite foundation of all my acts.
In addition to what I then created, I have had to learn little; and
I have had to alter nothmg.

On the contrary.

Today I am firmly convinced that basically and on the whole
all creative ideas appear in our youth, in so far as any such are
present. I distinguish between the wisdom of age, consisting
solely in greater thoroughness and caution due to the experience
of a long life, and the genius of youth, which pours out thoughts
and ideas with inexhaustible fertility, but cannot for the moment
develop them because of their very abundance. It is this youthful
genius which provides the building materials and plans for the
future, from which a wiser age takes the stones, carves tbpm and
completes the edifice, in so far as the so-called wisdom of age has
not stifled the genius of youth.

The life which I had hitherto led at home differed little or not
at all from' the life of other people. Carefree, I could await the
new day, and there was no social problem for me. The environ-
ment of my youth consisted of petty-bourgeois circles, hence of a

23

^Removal of Petty-Bourgeois Blinders-

world having very little relation to the purely manual worker.
For, strange as it may seem at first glance, the cleft between this
class, which in an economic sense is by no means so brilliantly
situated, and the manual worker is often deeper than we imagine.
The reason for this hostility, as we might almost call it, lies in the
fear of a social group, which has but recently raised itself above
the level of the manual worker, that it will sink back into the old
despised class, or at least become identified with it. To this, in
many cases, we must add the repugnant memory of the cultural
poverty of this lower class, the frequent vulgarity of its social
intercourse; the petty bourgeois’ own position in society, how-
ever insignificant it may be, makes any contact with this out-
grown stage of life and culture intolerable.

Consequently, the higher classes feel less constraint in their
dealings with the loivest of their fellow men than seems possible to
the ‘upstart.’

For anyone is an upstart who rises by his own efforts from his
previous position in life to a higher one.

Ultimately this struggle, which is often so hard, kills all pity.
Our own painful struggle for existence destroys our feeling for the
misery of those who have remained behind.

In this respect Fate was kind to me. By forcing me to return
to this world of poverty and insecurity, from which my father had
risen in the course of his life, it removed the blinders of a narrow
petty-bourgeois upbringing from my eyes. Only now did I learn
to know humanity, learning to distinguish between empty ap-
pearances or brutal externals and the inner being.

# * *

After the turn of the century, Vienna was, socially speaking,
one of the most baclcward cities in Europe.

Dazzling riches and loathsome poverty alternated Sharply. In
the center and in the inner districts you could really feel the pulse
of this realm of fifty-two milli ons, with all the dubious magic of

24

Mein Kampe '

the national melting pot. The Court with its dazzling glamour
attracted wealth and intelhgence from the rest of the country like
a magnet. Added to this was the strong centralization of the
Habsburg monarchy in itself.

It offered the sole possibility of holding this medley of nations
together in any set form. But the consequence was an extra-
ordinary concentration of high authorities in the imperial cap-
ital.

Yet not only in the political and intellectual sense was Vienna
the center of tie old Danube monarchy, but economically as well.
The host of high officers, government officials, artists, and scholars
was confronted by an even greater army of workers, and side by
side with aristocratic and commercial wealth dwelt dire poverty.
Outside the palaces on the Ring loitered thousands of unem-
ployed, and beneath this Via Triumphalis of old Austria dwelt the
homeless in the gloom and mud of the canals.

In hardly any German city could the social question have been
studied better than in Vienna. But make no mistake. This
‘studying’ cannot be done from lofty heights. No one who has
not been seized in the jaws of this murderous viper can know its
poison fangs. Otherwise nothing results but superficial chatter
and false sentimentality. Both are harmful. The former because
it can never penetrate to the core of the problem, the latter be-
cause it passes it by. I do not know which is more terrible: in-
attention to social misery such as we see every day among the
majority of those who have been favored by fortune or who have
risen by their own efforts, or else the snobbish, or at times tactless
and obtrusive, condescension of certain women of fashion in
skirts or in trousers, who ‘feel for the people.’ In any event, thppp
gentry sin far more than their minds, devoid of all instinct, are
capable of realizing. Consequently, and much to their own
amazement, the result of their social ‘efforts’ is always nil, fre-
quently, in fact, an indignant rebuff; though this, of course, is
passed off ks a proof of the people’s ingratitude.

Such minds are most reluctant to realize that social endeavor has
nothing in common with this sort of thing; that above all it can raise

The Helper

25

no claim to gratitude, since its function is not to distrUmie f cams
but to restore rights.

I was preserved from studying the social question in such a way.
By drawing me within its sphere of suffering, it did not seem to
invite me to ‘study,’ but to experience it in my own skin. It was
none of its doing that the guinea pig came through the operation
safe and sound.

* * *

An attempt to enumerate the sentiments I experienced in that
period could never be even approximately complete; I shall de-
scribe here only the most essential impressions, those which often
moved me most deeply, and the few lessons which I derived from
them at the time.

* * *

The actual business of finding work was, as a rule, not hard for
me, since I was not a skilled craftsman, but was obliged to seek
my daily bread as a so-caUed helper and sometimes as a casual
laborer.

I adopted the attitude of all those who sliake the dust of Europe
from their feet with the irrevocable intention of founding a new
existence in the New World and conquering a new home. Re-
leased from all the old, paralyzing ideas of profession and position,
environment and tradition, they snatch at every livelihood that
■offers itself, grasp at every sort of work, progressing step by step
to the realization that honest labor, no matter of what sort, dis-
graces no one. I, too, was determined to leap into this new world,
with both feet, and fight my way through.

V I soon learned that there was always some kind of work to be
ad, but equally soon I found out how easy it was td lose it.
The uncertainty of earning my daily bread soon seemed to me
one of the darkest sides of my new life.

26

Mein Kampf^

The ‘skilled’ worker does not find himself out on the street as
frequently as the unskilled j but he is not entirely immune to this
fate either. And in his case the loss of livelihood owing to lack of
work is replaced by the lock-out, or by going on strike himself.

In this respect the entire economy suffers bitterly from the
individual’s insecurity in earning his daily bread.

The peasant boy who goes to the big city, attracted by the
easier nature of the work (real or imaginary), by shorter hours,
but most of all by the dazzling light emanating from the metrop-
olis, is accustomed to a certain security in the matter of liveli-
hood. He leaves his old job only when there is at least some
prospect of a new one. For there is a great lack of agricultural
workers, hence the probability of any long period of unemploy-
ment is in itself small. It is a mistake to believe that the young
fellow who goes to the big city is made of poorer stuff than his
brother who continues to make an honest living from the peasant
sod. No, on the contrary: experience shows that all those ele-
ments which emigrate consist of the healthiest and most energetic
natures, rather than conversely. Yet among these ‘emigrants’
we must count, not only those who go to America, but to an equal
degree the young farmhand who resolves to leave his native vil-
lage for the strange city. He, too, is prepared to face an uncertain
fate. As a rule he arrives in the big city with a certain amount of
money; he has no need to lose heart on the very first day if he has
/the ill fortune to find no work for any length of time. But it is
I worse if, after finding a job, he soon loses it. To find a new one,
especially in winter, is often difficult if not impossible. Even so,

; the first weeks are tolerable. He receives an unemployment bene-
fit from his union funds and manages as well as possible. But
when his last cent is gone and the union, due to the long duration
of his unemployment, discontinues its pa3mients, great hardships
begin. Now he walks the streets, hungry; often he pawns and
sells his last possessions; his clothing becomes more and more
wretched; knd thus he sinks into external surroundings which, on
top of his physical misfortune, also poison his soul. If he is
evicted and if (as is so often the case) this occurs in winter, his-

t'ATE OF THE WORKER

27

misery is very great. At length he finds some sort of job again.
But the old story is repeated. The same thing happens a second
Itime, the third time perhaps it is even worse, and little by little
he learns to bear the eternal insecurity with greater and greater
, indifference. At last the repetition becomes a habit.

And so this man, who was formerly so hard-working, grows lax
in his whole view of life and gradually becomes the instrument of
those who use him only for their own base advantage. He has so
often been unemployed through no fault of his own that one time
more or less ceases to matter, even when the aim is no longer to
fight for economic rights, but to destroy political, social, or cul-
tural values in general. He may not be e.xactly enthusiastic
about strikes, but at any rate he has become indifferent.

With open eyes I was able to follow this process in a thousand
examples. The more I witnessed it, the greater grew my revulsion
for the big city which first avidly sucked men in and then so
cruelly crushed them.

When they arrived, they belonged to their people; after re-
maining for a few years, they were lost to it.

I, too, had been tossed around by life in the metropolis; in my
own skin I could feel the effects of this fate and taste them with
my soul. One more thing I saw: the rapid change from work to
unemployment and vice versa, plus the resultant fluctuation of
income, end by destroying in many all feeling for thrift, or any
understanding for a prudent ordering of their lives. It would
seem that the body gradually becomes accustomed to living on
the fat of the land in good times and going hungry in bad times.
Indeed, hunger destroys any resolution for reasonable budgeting
in better times to come by holding up to the eyes of its tormented
victim an eternal mirage of good living and raising this dream
to such a pitch of longing that a pathological desire puts an end
to aU restraint as soon as wages and earnings make it at all pos-
sible. The consequence is that once the man obtains work he
irresponsibly forgets all ideas of order and discipline, wnd begins
to live luxuriously for the pleasures of the moment. This upsets
even the small weekly budget, as even here any intelligent ap-

28

Mein Kampf

portionment is lacking; in the beginning it suffices for five days
instead of seven, later only for three, finally scarcely for one day,
and in the end it is drunk up in the very first night.

Often he has a wife and children at home. Sometimes they, too,
are infected by this life, especially when the man is good to them
on the whole and actually loves them in his own way. Then the
weekly wage is used up by the whole family in two or three days;
they eat and drink as long as the money holds out and the last
days they go hungry. Then the wife drags herself out into the
neighborhood, borrows a little, runs up little debts at the food
store, and in this way strives to get through the hard last days of
the week. At noon they aU sit together before their meager and
sometimes empty bowls, waiting for the next payday, speaking
of it, makin g plans, and, in their hunger, dreaming of the happi-
ness to come.

And so the little children, in their earliest beginnings, are made
familiar with this misery.

It ends badly if the man goes his own way from the very be-
ginning and the woman, for the children’s sake, opposes him.
Then there is fighting and quarreling, and, as the man grows
estranged from his wife, he becomes more intimate with alcohol.
He is drunk every Saturday, and, ■with her instinct of self-
preservation for herself and her children, the woman has.to fight
to get even a few pennies out of him; and, to make matters worse,
this usually occurs on his way from the factory to the barroom.
When at length he comes home on Sunday or even Monday night,
drunk and brutal, but always parted from his last cent, such
scenes often occur that God have mercy!

. I have seen this in hundreds of instances. At first I was re-
pelled or even outraged, but later I understood the whole tragedy
of this misery and its deeper causes. These people are the un-
fortunate victims of bad conditions!

Even more dismal in those days were the housing conditions.
The misery in which the Viennese day laborer lived was frightful
to behold. Even today it fills me with horror when I think of
these wretched caverns, the lodging houses and tenements, sordid
scenes of garbage, repulsive filth, and worse.

29

Fate of the Worker

What was — and still is — bound to happen some day, when
the stream of unleashed slaves pours forth from these miserable
dens to avenge themselves on their thoughtless feUow men!

For thoughtless they are!

Thoughtlessly they let things slide along, and with their utter
lack of intuition fail even to suspect that sooner or later Fate
must bring retribution, unless men conciliate Fate while there is
stiU time.

How thankful I am today to the Providence which sent me to
that school! In it I could no longer sabotage the subjects I did
not like. It educated me quickly and thoroughly.

If I did not wish to despair of the men w'ho constituted my
emuronment at that time, I had to learn to distinguish between
their external characters and lives and the foundations of their
development. Only then could all this be borne without losing
heart. Then, from all the misery and despair, from all the filth
and outward degeneration, it was no longer human beings that
emerged, but the deplorable results of deplorable laws; and the
hardship of my own life, no easier than the others, preserved me
from capitulating in tearful sentimentality to the degenerate
products of this process of development.

No, this is not the way to understand all these things!

Even then I saw that only a twofold road could lead to the goal
of improving these conditions:

The deepest sense of social responsibility for the creation of better
foundations for our development, coupled with brutal determination
in breaking down incurable tumors. ‘

Just as Nature does not concentrate her greatest attention in]
preserving what exists, but in breeding offspring to carry on the]
species, likewise, in human life, it is less important artificially to
alleviate existing evil, which, in view of human nature, is ninety-
nine per cent impossible, than to ensure from the start healthier »
channels for a future development. *

During my struggle for existence in Vienna, it had bdfcome dear
to me that

Social activity must never and on no account be directed toward

30

Mein Kampp

philanthropic flim-flam, lid rather toward the elimination of the
basic deficiencies in the organization of our economic and cultural
life that must — or at all events can — lead to the degeneration of the
individual.

The difficulty of appl3dng the most extreme and brutal methods
against the criminals who endanger the state lies not least in the
uncertainty of our judgment of the inner motives or causes of
such contemporary phenomena.

This uncertainty is only too well founded in our own sense of
guilt regarding such tragedies of degeneration; be that as it may,
it paralyzes any serious and firm decision and is thus partly re-
sponsible for the weak and half-hearted, because hesitant, execu-
tion of even the most necessary measures of self-preservation.

Only when an epoch ceases to be haunted by the shadow of its
own consciousness of guilt will it achieve the inner calm and
outward strength brutally and ruthlessly to prune off the wild
shoots and tear out the weeds.

Since the Austrian state had practically no social legislation or
jurisprudence, its weakness in combating even malig nan t tumors
was glaring.

I do not know what horrified me most at that time: the eco-
nomic misery of my companions, their moral and ethical coarse-
I ness, or the low level of their intellectual development.

How often does our bourgeoisie rise in high moral indignation
when they hear some miserable tramp declare that it is all the
same to him whether he is a German or not, that he feels equally
happy wherever he is, as long as he has enough to live on!

This lack of ‘national pride’ is most profoundly deplored, and
horror at such an attitude is expressed in no uncertain terms.

How m&,ny people have asked themselves what was the real
reason for the superiority of their own sentiments?

How many are aware of the infinite number of separate mem-

Lack of ‘National Pride’

31

ories of the greatness of our national fatherland in all the fields of
cultural and artistic life, whose total result is to inspire them with
just pride at being members of a nation so blessed?

How many suspect to how great an extent pride in the father-
land depends on knowledge of its greatness in all these fields?

Do our bourgeois circles ever stop to consider to what an ab-
surdly small extent this prerequisite of pride in the fatherland is
transmitted to the ‘people’?

Let us not try to condone this by saying that ‘it is no better in
other countries,’ and that in those countries the worker avows his
nationality ‘notwithstanding.’ Even if this were so, it could
serve as no excuse for our own omissions. But it is not so; for tho
thing that we constantly designate as ‘chauvinistic’ education,
for example among the French people, is nothing other than ex-
treme emphasis on the greatness of France in all the fields of
culture, or, as the Frenchman puts it, of ‘civilization.’ The fact
is that the young Frenchman is not brought up to be objective,
but is instilled with the most subjective conceivable view, in so
far as the importance of the political or cultural greatness of his
fatherland is concerned.

This education will always have to be limited to general and
extremely broad values which, if necessary, must be engraved in
the memory and feeling of the people by eternal repetition.

But to the negative sin of omission is added in our country the
positive destruction of the little which the individual has the
good fortune tq learn in school. The rats that politically poison
our nation gnaw even this little from the heart and memory of
the broad masses, in so far as this has not been previously ac-
complished by poverty and suffering.

Imagine, for instance, the following scene:

In a basement apartment, consisting of two stuffy rooms,
dwells a worker’s family of seven. Among the five children there
is a boy of, let us assume, three years. This is the age in which the
first impressions are made on the consciousness of ‘the child.
Talented persons retain traces of memory from this period down
to advanced old age. The very narrowness and overcrowding of

32

Mein Kampe

the room does not lead to favorable conditions. Quarreling and
wrangling will very frequently arise as a result. In these circum-
stances, people do not live with one another, they press against
one’ another. Every argument, even the most trifling, which in a
spacious apartment can be reconciled by a mild segregation, thus
solving itself, here leads to loathsome wrangling without end.
Among the children, of course, this is still bearable; they always
fight under such circumstances, and among themselves they
quickly and thoroughly forget about it. But if this battle is car-
ried on between the parents themselves, and almost every day in
forms which for vulgarity often leave nothing to be desired, then,
if only very gradually, the results of such visual instruction must
ultimately become apparent in the children. The character they
will inevitably assume if this mutual quarrel takes the form of
■brutal attacks of the father against the mother, of drunken
beatings, is hard for anyone who does not know this milieu to
imagine. At the age of six the pitiable little boy suspects the
existence of things which can inspire even an adult with nothing
but horror. Morally poisoned, physically undernourished, his
poor little head full of lice, the young ‘citizen’ goes off to public
school. After a great struggle he may learn to read and write, but
that is about all. His doing any homework is out of the question.
On the contrary, the very mother and father, even in the presence
of the children, talk about his teacher and school in terms which
^are not fit to be repeated, and are more inclined to curse the
latter to their face than to take their little offspring across their
I knees and teach them some sense. All the other things that the
little fellow hears at home do not tend to increase his respect for
his dear fellow men. Nothing good remains of humanity, no in-
stitution remains unassailed; beginning with his teacher and up
to the head of the government, whether it is a question of religion
or of morality as such, of the state or society, it is all the same,
everything is reviled in the most obscene terms and dragged into
the filth df the basest possible outlook. When at the age of
fourteen the young man is discharged from school, it is hard to
decide what is stronger in him: his incredible stupidity as far as

Young Despiser of Authority

33

any real knowledge and ability are concerned, or the corrosive
insolence of his behavior, combined with an immorality, even at
this age, which would make your hair stand on end.

WTiat position can this man — to whom even now hardly
anything is holy, who, just as he has encountered no greatness,
conversely suspects and knows all the sordidness of life — occupy
in the life into which he is now preparing to emerge?

The three-year-old child has become a fifteen-year-old despiser
■of all authority. Thus far, aside from dirt and filth, this young
•man has seen nothing which might inspire him to any higher
[enthusiasm.

But only now does he enter the real university of this existence.

Now he begins the same life which all along his childhood
years ^ he has seen his father living. He hangs around the street
corners and bars, coming home God knows when; and for a
change now and then he beats the broken-down being which was
once his mother, curses God and the world, and at length is con-
victed of some particular offense and sent to a house of correction.

There he receives his last polish.

And his dear bourgeois fellow men are utterly amazed at the
lack of ‘national enthusiasm’ in this young ‘citizen.’

Day by day, in the theater and in the movies, in backstairs
literature and the yellow press, they see the poison poured into
the people by bucketfuls, and then they are amazed at the low
‘moral content,’ the ‘national indifference,’ of the masses of the
people.

As though trashy film s, yellow press, and such-like dung ® could
furnish the foundations of a knowledge of the greatness of our
fatherland! — quite aside from the early education of the in-
dividual.

What I had never suspected before, I quickly and thoroughly
learned in those years:

The question of the ‘nationalization' of a people is, among other

* ‘die Jahre der Kindheit entlang.’

s ‘Uhttliche Jauche.’ In the second edition this is toned down to ‘Uhnliches'
(the like).

34

Mein Kampf

things, pn/marily o, question of cteaUng healthy social conditions as a
foundation for the possibility of educating the individual. For only
those who through school and upbringing learn to know the cultural,
economic, but above all the political, greatness of their own fatherland
can and will achieve the inner pride in tire privilege of being a metn-
ber of such a people. And I can fight only for something that I love,
love only what I respect, and respect only what I at least know.

Once my interest in the social question was aroused, I began
to study it with all thoroughness. It was a new and hitherto un-
known world which opened before me.

In the years 1909 and 1910, my own situation had changed
somewhat in so far as I no longer had to earn my daily bread as
a common laborer. By this time I was working independently
as a small draftsman and painter of watercolors. Hard as this
was with regard to earnings — it was barely enough to live on —
it was good for my chosen profession. Now I was no longer dead
tired in the evening when I came home from work, unable to
look at a book without soon dozing off. My present work ran
parallel to my future profession. Moreover, I was master of my
own time and could apportion it better than had previously been
possible.

I painted to make a living and studied for pleasure.

Thus I was able to supplement my visual instruction in the
social problem by theoretical study. I studied more or less all of
the books I was able to obtain regarding this whole field, and for
the rest immersed myself in my own thoughts.

I believe that those who knew me in those days took ttk* for an
eccentric.

Amid all this, as was only natural, I served my love of archi-
tecture with ardent zeal. Along with music, it seemed to me the
queen of the arts: under such circumstances my concern with it
was not ‘work,’ but the greatest pleasure. I could read and draw

The Art oe Reading

35

until late into the night, and never grow tired. Thus my faith
grew that my beautiful dream for the future would become reality
after all, even though this might require long years. I was firmly
convinced that I should some day make a name for myself as an
architect.

In addition, I had the greatest interest in everything con-
nected with politics, but this did not seem to me very significant.
On the contrary: in my eyes this was the self-evident duty of
every thinking man. Anyone who failed to understand this lost
the right to any criticism or complaint.

In this field, too, I read and studied much.

By ‘reading,’ to be sure, I mean perhaps something different
than the average member of our so-caUed ‘intelligentsia.’

I know people who ‘read’ enormously, book for book, letter
for letter, yet whom I would not describe as ‘well-read.’ True,
they possess a mass of ‘knowledge,’ but their brain is unable to
organize and register the material they have taken in. They lack
the art of sifting what is valuable for them in a book from that
which is without value, of retaining the one forever, and, if pos-
sible, not even seeing the rest, but in any case not dragging it
around with them as useless ballast. For reading is no end in
itself, but a means to an end. It should primarily help to fill the
framework constituted by every man’s talents and abilities; in
addition, it should provide the tools and building materials
which the individual needs for his life’s work, regardless whether
this consists in a primitive struggle for sustenance or the satis-
faction of a high calling; secondly, it should transmit a general
world view. In both cases, however, it is essential that the con-
tent of what one reads at any time should not be transmitted to
the memory in the sequence of the book or books, but like the
stone of a mosaic should fit into the general world picture in its
proper place, and thus help to form this picture in the mind of
the reader. Otherwise there arises a confused muddle of memo-
rized facts which not only are worthless, but also make their un-
fortunate possessor conceited; For such a reader now believes
himself in all seriousness to be ‘educated,’ to understand some-

36

Mein Kampf

thing of life, to have knowledge, while in reality, with every new
acquisition of this kind of ‘education,’ he is growing more and
more removed from the world until, not infrequently, he ends
i^ip in a sanitarium or in parliament.

Never will such a mind succeed in culling from the confusion of
his ‘knowledge’ anything that suits the demands of the hour, for
his intellectual ballast is not organized along the lines of life, but
in the sequence of the books as he read them and as their content
has piled up in his brain. If Fate, in the requirements of his daily
life, desired to remind him to make a correct application of what
he had read, it would have to indicate title and page number,
since the poor fool would otherwise never in all his life find the
correct place. But since Fate does not do this, these bright boys
in any critical situation come into the most terrible embarrass-

ment, cast about convulsively for analogous cases, and with
mortal certainty naturally find the wrong formulas.

If this were not true, it would be impossible for us to under-
stand the political behavior of our learned and highly placed
government heroes, unless we decided to assume outright vil-
lainy instead of pathological propensities.

On the other hand, a man who possesses the art of correct
readiiig will, in studying any book, magazine, or pamphlet, in-
stinctively and immediately perceive everything which in his
opinion is worth permanently remembering, either because it is
suited to his purpose or generally worth knowing. Once the
knowledge he has achieved in this fashion is correctly coordinated
(Within the somehow existing picture of this or that subject created
y the imagination, it wiU function either as a corrective or a
coinplement, thus enhancing either the correctness or the clarity
0 t e picture. Then, if life suddenly sets some question before us
for examination or answer, the memory, if this method of reading
IS observed, will i^ediately take the existing picture as a norm,
and from it will derive all the individual items regarding these
questions assembled in the course of decades, submit them to

i« ^1™ examination and reconsideration, until the question
IS clarified or answered.

Social Democracy

37

Only this kind of reading has meaning and purpose.

An orator, for example, who does not thus provide his intelli-
gence with the necessary foundation will never be in a position
cogently to defend his view in the face of opposition, though it
may be a thousand times true or real. In every discussion his
memory wiU treacherously leave him in the lurch; he will find
neither grounds for reinforcing his own contentions nor any for
confuting those of his adversary. If, as in the case of a speaker,
it is only a question of making a fool of himself personally, it may
not be so bad, but not so when Fate predestines such a know-it-
aU incompetent to be the leader of a state.

Since my earliest youth I have endeavored to read in the correct
way, and in this endeavor I have been most happily supported
by my memory and intelligence. Viewed in this light, my Vienna
period was especially fertile and valuable. The experiences of
daily life provided stimulation for a constantly renewed study'
of the most varied problems. Thus at last I was in a position to
bolster up reality by theory and test theory by reality, and was*
preserved from being stifled by theory or growing banal through
reality.

In this period the experience of daily life directed and stimu-
lated me to the most thorough theoretical study of two questions
in addition to the social question.

Who knows when I would have immersed myself in the doc-
trines and essence of Marxism if that period had not literally
thrust my nose into the problem!

* * *

What I knew of Social Democracy in my youth was exceed-
ingly little and very inaccurate.

I was profoundly pleased that it should carry on the struggle
for universal suffrage and the secret ballot. For even then my
intelligence told me that this must help to weaken the Habsburg
regime which I so hated. In the conviction that the Austrian

38

Mein Kampe

Empire cquld never be oreserved except by victimizing its Ger-
mans, but that even the price of a gradual Slavization of the
German element by no means provided a guaranty of an empire
really capable of survival, since the power of the Slavs to uphold
the state must be estimated as exceedingly dubious, I welcomed
every development which in my opinion would inevitably lead
to the collapse of this impossible state which condemned ten
million Germans to death. The more the linguistic Babel cor-
roded and disorganized parliament, the closer drew the inevitable
hour of the disintegration of this Babylonian Empire, and with
it the hour of freedom for my German-Austrian people. Only in
this way could the Anschluss with the old mother country be
restored.

Consequently, this activity of the Social Democracy was not
displeasing to me. And the fact that it strove to improve the
living conditions of the worker, as, in my innocence, I was still
stupid enough to believe, likewise seemed to speak rather for it
than against it. What most repelled me was its hostile attitude
toward the struggle for the preservation of Germanism, its dis-
graceful courting of the Slavic ‘comrade,’ who accepted this
declaration of love in so far as it was bound up with practical
concessions, but otherwise maintained a lofty and arrogant re-
serve, thus giving the obtrusive beggars their deserved reward.

Thus, at the age of seventeen the word ‘Marxism’ was as yet
little known to me, while ‘Social Democracy’ and socialism
seemed to me identical concepts. Here again it required the fist
of Fate to open my eyes to this unprecedented betrayal of the
peoples.

Up to that time I had known the Social Democratic Party only
as an onlooker at a few mass demonstrations, without possessing
even the slightest insight into the mentality of its adherents or
the nature of its doctrine; but now, at one stroke, I came into
contact with the products of its education and ‘philosophy.’
And in a few months I obtained what might otherwise have re-
quired decades: an understanding of a pestilential whore,^ doak-

* ‘Peslhure.’ Second edition has ‘PesHknz.’

First Meeting With Social Democrats

39

ing herself as social virtue and brotherly love, from which I hope
humanity will rid this earth with the greatest dispatch, sinrp
otherwise the earth might well become rid of humanity.

My first encounter with the Social Democrats occurred dur in g
my employment as a building worker.

From the very beginning it was none too pleasant. My clothing
was still more or less in order, my speech cultivated, and my
manner reserved. I was stiU so busy with my own destiny that
I could not concern myself much with the people around me. I
looked for work only to avoid sta^ation, only to obtain an op-
portunity of continuing my education, though ever so slowly.
Perhaps I would not have concerned myself at all with my new
environment if on the third or fourth day an event had not taken
place which forced me at once to take a position. I was asked to
join the organization.

My knowledge of trade^nion organization was at that time
practically non-existent. I could not have proved that its exist-
ence was either beneficial or harmful. When I was told that I
had to join, I refused. The reason I gave was that I did not un-
derstand the matter, but that I would not let myself be forced
into anything. Perhaps my first reason accounts for my not being
thrown out at once. They may perhaps have hoped to convert
me or break down my resistance in a few days. In any event,
they had made a big mistake. At the end of two weeks I could
no longer have joined, even if I had wanted to. In these two
weeks I came to know the men around me more closely, and no
power in the world could have moved me to join an organization
whose members had meanwhile come to appear to me in so un-
favorable a light.

During the first days I was irritable.

At noon some of the workers went to the near-by taverns while
others remained at the building site and ate a lunch which, as a rule,
was quite wretched. These were the married men whose wives
brought them their noonday soup in pathetic bowls. , Toward
the end of the week their number always increased, why I did not
imderstand until later. On these occasions politics was discussed .

40

Mein Kampf

I drank my bottle of milk and ate my piece of bread somewhere
off to one side, and cautiously studied my new associates or re-
flected on my miserable lot. Nevertheless, I heard more than
enough; and often it seemed to me that they purposely moved
closer to me, perhaps in order to make me take a position. In
any case, what I heard was of such a nature as to infuriate me in
. the extreme. These men rejected everything: the nation as an
invention of the ‘ capitalistic ’ (how often was I forced to hear this
single word!) classes; the fatherland as an instrument of the
bourgeoisie for the exploitation of the working class; the authority
: of law as a means for oppressing the proletariat; the school as an
institution for breeding slaves and slaveholders; religion as a
means for stultifying the people and making them easier to ex-
1 ploit; morality as a symptom of stupid, sheeplike patience, etc.
There was absolutely nothing which was not drawn through the
mud of a terrifying depth.^

■ At first I tried to keep silent. But at length it became impos-
sible. I began to take a position and to oppose them. But I was
forced to recognize that this was utterly hopeless until I possessed
certain definite knowledge of the controversial points. And so I
began to examine the sources from which they drew this sup-
posed wisdom. I studied book after book, pamphlet after pam-
phlet.

From then on our discussions at work were often very heated.
I argued back, from day to day better informed than my an-
^gonists concerning their own knowledge, until one day they
blade use of the weapon which most readily conquers reason:

^ terror and violence. A few of the spokesmen on the opposing side
forced me either to leave the building at once or be thrown off the
scaffolding. Since I was alone and resistance seemed hopeless, I
preferred, richer by one experience, to Mow the former counsel.

I went away filled with disgust, but at the same time so agi-
tated that it would have been utterly impossible for me to turn
my back on the whole business. No, after the first surge of in-
dignation, my stubbornness regained the upper hand. I was
^ ‘In den Kot einer entsetzlicken Tiefe.’

Social-Demockatic Press 43

determined to go to work on another building in ^ite of my
experience. In this decision I was reinforced by Poverty which,
a few weeks later, after I had spent what little I had saved from
my wages, enfolded me in her heartless arms. I had to go back
whether I wanted to or not. The same old story began anew and
ended very much the same as the first time.

I wrestled with my innermost soul: are these people human,
worthy to belong to a great nation?

A painful question; for if it is answered in the afl&rmative, the
struggle for my nationality really ceases to be worth the hard-
ships and sacrifices which the best of us have to make for the
sake of such scum; and if it is answered in the negative, our na-
tion is pitifully poor in human beings.

On such days of reflection and cogitation, I pondered with
anxious concern on the masses of those no longer belonging to
their people and saw them swelling to the proportions of a
menacing army.

With what changed feeling I now gazed at the endless columns
of a mass demonstration of Viennese workers that took place one
day as they marched past four abreast! For nearly two hours I
stood there watching with bated breath the gigantic human
dragon slowly winding by. In oppressed anxiety, I finally left the
place and sauntered homeward. In a tobacco shop on the way I
saw the Arbeiter-Zdiung, the central organ of the old Austrian
Social Democracy. It was available in a cheap people’s cafe, to
which I often went to read newspapers; but up to that time I had
not been able to bring myself to spend more than two minutes on
the miserable sheet, whose whole tone affected me like moral
vitriol. Depressed by the demonstration, I was driven on by an
inner voice to buy the sheet and read it carefuUy. That evening
I did so, fighting down the fury that rose up in me from time to
time at this concentrated solution of lies.

More than any theoretical literature, my daily reading of the
Social Democratic press enabled me to study the inner nature of
these thought-processes.

For what a difference between the glittering phrases about free-

42

Mein Kampf

dom, beauty, and dignity in the theoretical literature, the de-
lusive welter of words seemingly expressing the most profound
and laborious wisdom, the loathsome humanitarian morality —
all this written with the incredible gall that comes with prophetic
certainty — and the brutal daily press, shunning no villainy,
employing every means of slander, lying with a virtuosity that
would bend iron beams, all in the name of this gospel of a new
humanity. The one is addressed to the simpletons of the middle,
not to mention the upper, educated, ‘classes,’ the other to the
masses.

For me immersion in the literature and press of this doctrine
and organization meant finding my way back to my own people.

What had seemed to me an unbridgable gulf became the source
of a greater love than ever before.

Only a fool can behold the work of this villainous poisoner and
still condemn the victim. The more independent I made myself
in the next few years, the clearer grew my perspective, hence my
insight into the inner causes of the Social Democratic successes.
I now understood the significance of the brutal demand that I
read only Red papers, attend only Red meetings, read only Red
books, etc. With plastic clarity I saw before my eyes the in-
evitable result of this doctrine of intolerance.

The psyche of the great masses is not receptive to anything
that is half-hearted and weak.

Like the woman, whose psychic state is determined less by
grounds of abstract reason than by an indefinable emotional
longing for a force which wiU complement her nature, and who
ronsequentiy, would rather bow to a strong man than dominate
i weakling, likewise the masses love a commander more than a
letitioner and feel inwardly more satisfied by a doctrine, tolerat-
mg no other beside itself, than by the granting of liberalistic
freedom with which, as a rule, they can do little, and are prone
to feel that they have been abandoned.JThey are equally un-
aware of their shameless spiritual terrorization and the hideous
abuse of their human freedom, for they absolutely fail to suspect
the inner insanity of the whole doctrine. All they see is the ruth-

Social-Democratic Tactics

43

less force and brutality of its calculated manifestations, to which
they always submit in the end.

If Social Democracy is opposed by a doctrine of greater truth, buT
equal brutality of methods, the latter will conquer, though this may
require the bitterest struggle.

Before two years had passed, the theory as well as the technical
methods of Social Democracy were clear to me.

I understood the infamous spiritual terror which this move-
ment exerts, particularly on the bourgeoisie, which is neither
morally nor mentally equal to such attacks; at a given sign it
unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against what-
ever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the at-
tacked persons break down and, just to have peace again, they
sacrifice the hated individual.

However, the fools obtain no peace.

The game begins again and is repeated over and over until
fear of the mad dog results in suggestive paralysis,
f Since the Social Democrats best know the value of force from
their own experience, they most violently attack those in whose
pature they detect any of this substance which is so rare. Con-
versely, they praise every weakling on the opposing side, some-
times cautiously, sometimes loudly, depending on the real or
Supposed quality of his intelligence.

They fear an impotent, spineless genius less than a forceful
nature of moderate intelligence.

But with the greatest enthusiasm they commend weaklings in
both mind and force.

They know how to create the illusion that this is the only way
of preserving the peace, and at the same time, stealthily but
steadily, they conquer one position after another, sometimes by
silent blackmail, sometimes by actual theft, at moments when the
general attention is directed toward other matters, and either
does not want to be disturbed or considers the matter too small
to raise a stir about, thus again irritating the Aucious antagonist.

This is a tactic based on precise calculation of all human weak-
nesses, and its result will lead to success with almost mathe-

44

Mein Kampe

matical certainty unless the opposing side learns to combat poison
gas with poison gas.

It is our duty to inform all weaklings that this is a question of
to be or not to be.

I achieved an equal understanding of the importance of physi-
cal terror toward the individual and the masses.

Here, too, the psychological effect can be calculated with pre-
cision. ,

' Terror at the place of employment, in the factory, in the meeiingj
haU, and on the occasion of mass demonstrations mil always be sitc-j
cessful unless opposed by equal terror. '

In this case, to be sure, the party will cry bloody murder;
though it has long despised aU state authority, it will set up a
howling cry for that same authority and in most cases will
actually attain its goal amid the general confusion: it will find
some idiot of a higher official who, in the imbecilic hope of
propitiating the feared adversary for later eventualities, will help
this world plague to break its opponent.

The impression made by such a success on the minds of the
great masses of supporters as well as opponents can only be
measured by those who know the soul of a people, not from
books, but from life. For while in the ranks of their supporters
the victory achieved seems a triumph of the justice of their own
cause, the defeated adversary in most cases despairs of the suc-
cess of any further resistance.

The more familiar I became, principally with the methods of
physical terror, the more indulgent I grew toward all the hun-
dreds of thousands who succumbed to it.

What makes me most indebted to that period of suffering is
that It alone gave back to me my people, taught me to distinguish
the victims from their seducers.

The results of this seduction can be designated only as victims.
For if I attempted to draw a few pictures from life, depicting the
e^nce of these ‘lowest’ classes, my picture would not be com-
plete without the assurance that in these depths I also found
bright spots m the form of a rare willingness to make sacrifices.

Sins of the Bourgeoisie

45

of loyal comradeship, astonishing frugality, and modest reserve,
especially among the older workers. Even though these virtues
were steadily vanishing in the younger generation, if only through
the general effects of the big city, there were many, even among
the young men, whose healthy blood managed to dominate the
foul tricks of life. If in their political activity, these good, often
kind-hearted people nevertheless joined the mortal enemies of
our nationality, thus helping to cement their ranks, the reason
was that they neither understood nor could understand the base-
ness of the new doctrine, and that no one else took the trouble to
bother about them, and finally that the social conditions were
stronger than any will to the contrary that may have been pres-
ent. The poverty to which they sooner or later succumbed drove
them into the camp of the Social Democracy.

Since on innumerable occasions the bourgeoisie has in the clumsi-
est and most immoral way opposed demands which were justified
from the universal human point of view, often without obtaining or
even justifiably expecting any profit from such an attitude, even the
most self-respecting worker was driven out of the trade-union or-
ganization into political activity.

Milli ons of workers, I am sure, started out as enemies of the
Social Democratic Party in their innermost soul, but their re-
sistance was overcome in a way which was sometimes utterly
insane; that is, when the bourgeois parties adopted a hostile at-
titude toward every demand of a social character. Their simple,
narrow-minded rejection of all attempts to better working con-
ditions, to introduce safety devices on machines, to prohibit child
labor and protect the woman, at least in the months when she was
bearing the future national comrade under her heart, contributed
to drive the masses into the net of Social Democracy which
gratefuUy snatched at every case of such a disgraceful attitude.
Never can our political bourgeoisie make good its sins in this
direction, for by resisting aU attempts to do away with social
abuses, they sowed hatred and seemed to justify even the asser-
tions of the mortal enemies of the entire nation, to the effect that
only the Social Democratic Party represented the interests of the
working people.

46

Mein Kampf

Thus, to begin with, they created the moral basis for the actual
existence of the trade unions, the organization which has always
the most effective pander to the political party.

In my Viennese years I was forced, whether I liked it or not, to
(jake a position on the trade unions.

jf^ince I regarded them as an inseparable ingredient of the
Social Democratic Party as such, my decision was instantaneous
and — mistaken.

flatly rejected them without thinking.

And in this infinitely important question, as in so many others,
Fate itself became my instructor.

The result was a reversal of my first judgment.

By my twentieth year I had learned to distinguish between a
union as a means of defending the general social rights of the
wage-earner, and obtaining better living conditions for him as an
individual, and the trade union as an instrument of the party in
the political class struggle.

The fact that Social Democracy understood the enormous im-
portance of the trade-union movement assured it of this instru-
ment and hence of success; the fact that the bourgeoisie were not
aware of this cost them their political position. They thought
they could stop a logical development by means of an impertinent
‘rejection,’ but in reality they only forced it into illogical chan-
nels. For to call the trade-union movement in itself unpatriotic
is nonsense and untrue to boot. Rather the contrary is true. If
trade-union activity strives and succeeds in bettering the lot of a
class which is one of the basic supports of the nation, its work is
not only not anti-patriotic or seditious, but ‘national’ in the
truest sense of the word. For in this way it helps to create the
social premises without which a general national education is
unthinkable. It wins the highest merit by eliminating social
cankers, attacking intellectual as well as physical infections, and
thus helping to contribute to the general health of the body
politic.

Consequently, the question of their necessity is really super-
fluous.

47

The Teade-Union Question

As long as there are employers with little social understanding
or a deficient sense of justice and propriety, it is not only the j
right but the duty of their employees, who certainly constitute a i
part of our nationality, to protect the interests of the general i
public against the greed and unreason of the individual; for the i
preservation of loyalty and faith in a social group is just as much ,
to the interest of a nation as the preservation of the people’s '
health.

Both of these are seriously menaced by unworthy employers
who do not feel themselves to be members of the national com-
munity as a whole. From the disastrous effects of their greed or
ruthlessness grow profound evils for the future.

'To eliminate the causes of such a development is to do a service
to the nation and in no sense the opposite.

Let no one say that every individual is free to draw the conse-
quences from an actual or supposed injustice; in other words, to
leave bis job. No! This is shadow-boxing and must be regarded as
an attempt to divert attention. Either the elimination of bad,
unsocial conditions serves^the interest of the nation or it does not.
If^it does, the struggle_ against them must .be carried on wit h
weapons whicb offer the hope oLsucce^. Th e individual worke r,
however, is never in a position^to defend himself against the
power o f the gre at indu striaB st , for in simh ma^er^it cannot be
superior j ust ice that .conq,uer&-(jf were recognized, the whole

struggle would stop from lack of cause) — no, what matters here is
superior power. Otherwise the sense of justice alone would bring
the struggle to a fair conclusion, or, more accurately speaking,
the struggle could never arise. __

No, if the unsocial or unworthy treatment of 'men calls for resist
ance, this struggle, as long as ■no legal judicial authorities have been
created for the elimination of these evils, can only be decided by
superior power. And this makes it obvious that the power of the
employer concentrated in a single person can only he countered by
the mass of employees banded inw a single person, if the possibility
of a victory is not to be renounced in advance.

Thus, trade-union organization can lead to a strengthening of

48

Mein Kampe

the social idea in its practical effects on daily life, and thereby to
an elimination of irritants which are constantly giving cause for
dissatisfaction and complaints.

If this is not the case, it is to a great extent the fault of those
who have been able to place obstacles in the path of any legal
regulation of social evils or thwart them by means of their politi-
cal influence.

Proportionately as the political bourgeoisie did not understand,
or rather did not want to understand, the importance of trade-
union organization, and resisted it, the Social Democrats took
possession of the contested movement. Thus, far-sightedly it
created a firm foundation which on several critical occasions has
stood up when aU other supports failed. In this way the intrinsic
purpose was gradually submerged, making place for new aims.

It never occurred to the Social Democrats to limit the move-
ment they had thus captured to its original task.

No, that was far from their intention.

In a few decades the weapon for defending the social rights of
man had, in their experienced hands, become an instrument for
the destruction of the national economy. And they did not let
themselves be hindered in the least by the interests of the workers.
For in politics, as in other fields, the use of economic pressure
always permits blackmail, as long as the necessary unscrupulous-
ness is present on the one side, and sufficient sheepUke patience
on the other.

Something which in this case was true of both sides.

* * *

By the turn of the century, the trade-union movement had
ceased to serve its former function. From year to year it had
entered more and more into the sphere of Social Democratic
politics and finally had no use except as a battering-ram in the
class struggle. Its purpose was to cause the collapse of the whole
arduously constructed economic edifice by persistent blows, thus.

POLITIZATION OF TRADE UNIONS

49

the more easily, after removing its economic foundations, to pre-
pare the same lot for the edifice of state. Less and less attention
was paid to defending the real needs of the working class, and
finally political expediency made it seem undesirable to relieve
the social or cultural miseries of the broad masses at aU, for other-
wise there was a risk that these masses, satisfied in their desires,
could no longer be used forever as docile shock troops.

The leaders of the class struggle looked on this development
with such dark forebo ding and dread that in the end they re-
jected any really beneficial social betterment out of hand, and
actually attacked it with the greatest determination.

And they were never at a loss for an explanation of a line of
behavior which seemed so inexpli^ble.

By screwing the demands higher and higher, they made their
possible fulfillment seem so trivial and unimportant that they
were able at all times to tell the masses that they were dealing
with nothing but a diabolical attempt to weaken, if possible in
fact to paralyze, the offensive power of the working class in the
cheapest way, by such a ridiculous satisfaction of the most ele-
mentary rights. In view of the great masses’ small capacity for
thought, we need not be surprised at the success of these
methods.

The "bourgeois camp was indignant at this obvious insincerity
of Social Democratic tactics, but did not draw from it the slight-
est inference with regard to their own conduct. The Social
Democrats’ fear of really raising the working class out of the
depths of their cultural and social misery should have inspired
the greatest exertions in this very direction, thus gradually
wresting the weapon from the hands of the advocates of the
class struggle.

This, however, was not done.

Instead of attacking and seizing the enemy’s position, the
bourgeoisie preferred to let themselves be pressed to the wall and
finally had recourse to utterly inadequate makeshifts, which re-
mained ineffectual because they came too late, and, moreover,
were easy to reject because they were too insignificant. Thus,

50

Mein Kampf

in reality, everything remained as before, except that the dis-
content was greater.

Like a menacing storm-cloud, the ‘free trade union’ hung, even
then, over the political horizon and the existence of the individual.

It was one of the most frightful instruments of terror against
the security and independence of the national economy, the
solidity of the state, and personal freedom.

And chiefly this was what made the concept of democracy a
sordid and ridiculous phrase, and held up brotherhood to ever-
lasting scorn in the words: ‘And if our comrade you won’t be,
we’U bash your head in — one, two, three! ’

And that was how I became acquainted with this friend of
humanity. In the course of the years my view was broadened
and deepened, but I have had no need to change it.

* # *

The greater insight I gathered into the external character of
Social Democracy, the greater became ray longing to comprehend
the inner core of this doctrine.

The official party literature was not much use for this purpose.
In so far as it deals with economic questions, its assertions and
proofs are false; in so far as it treats of political aims, it lies.
Moreover, I was inwardly repelled by the new-fangled petti-
fogging phraseology and the style in which it was written. With
an enormous expenditure of words, unclear in content or incom-
tprehensible as to meaning, they stammer an endless hodgepodge
f of phrases purportedly as witty as in reality they are meaningless.
Offiy our decadent metropolitan bohemians can feel at home in
to inaze of reasoning and cull an ‘inner experience’ from this
ung-heap of literary dadaism, supported by the proverbial
modesty of a section of our people who always detect profound
msdom in what is most incomprehensible to them personally.
HowevCT, by balandng the theoretical untruth and nonsense of

I graduJly

obtained a clear picture of its intrinsic will.

51

The Jewish Question

At such times I was overcome by gloomy foreboding and
malignant fear. Then I saw before me a doctrine, comprised of
egotism and hate, which can lead to victory pursuant to mathe-
matical laws, but in so doing must put an end to humanity.

Meanwhile, I had learned to understand the connection be-
tween this doctrine of destruction and the nature of a people of
which, up to that time, I had known next to nothing.

Only a knowledge of the Jews provides the key with which to com-
prehend the inner, and consequently real, aims of Social Democracy^

The erroneous conceptions of the aim and meaning of this party 1
fall from our eyes like veils, once we come to know this people,
and from the fog and mist of social phrases rises the leering
grimace of Marxism.

* * *

Today it is difficult, if not impossible, for me to say when the
word ‘Jew’ first gave me ground for special thoughts. At home I
do not remember having heard the word during my father’s life-
time. I believe that the old gentleman would have regarded any
special emphasis on this term as cultural backwardness. In the
course of his life he had arrived at more or less cosmopolitan
views wliich, despite his pronoimced national sentiments, not
only remained intact, but also affected me to some extent.

Likewise at school I found no occasion which could have led
me to change this inherited picture.

At the Realschule, to be sure, I did meet one Jewish boy who
was treated by all of us with caution, but only because various
experiences had led us to doubt his discretion and we did not
particularly trust him; but neither I nor the others had any
thoughts on the matter.

Not until my fourteenth or fifteenth year did I begin to come
across the word ‘Jew,’ with any frequency, partly in connection
with political discussions. This filled me with a mild distaste, and
r could not rid myself of an unpleasant feeling that always came

52

Mein Kampe

over me Whenever religious quarrels occurred in my presence.

At that time I did not think anything else of the question.

There were few Jews in Linz. In the course of the centuries
their outward appearance had become Europeanized and had
taken on a human look; in fact, I even took them for Germans.
The absurdity of this idea did not dawn on me because I saw no
distinguishing feature but the strange religion. The fact that
they had, as I believed, been persecuted on this account some-
times almost turned my distaste at unfavorable remarks about
them into horror.

Thus far I did not so much as suspect the existence of an or-
ganized opposition to the Jews.

Then I came to Vienna.

Preoccupied by the abundance of my impressions in the archi-
tectural field, oppressed by the hardship of my own lot, I gained
at first no insight into the inner stratification of the people in this
gigantic city. Notwithstanding that Vienna in those days
counted nearly two hundred thousand Jews among its two million
inhabitants, I did not see them. In the first few weeks my eyes
and my senses were not equal to the flood of values and ideas.
Not until calm gradually returned and the agitated picture began
to clear did I look around me more carefully in my new world,
and then among other things I encountered the Jewish question.

I cannot maintain that the way in which I became acquainted
with them struck me as particularly pleasant. For the Jew was
stiU characterized for me by nothing but his religion, and there-
fore, on grounds of human tolerance, I maintained my rejection
of religious attacks in this case as in others. Consequently, the
tone, particularly that of the Viennese anti-Semitic press, seemed
to me unworthy of the cultural tradition of a great nation. I was
oppressed by the memory of certain occurrences in the Middle
Ages, which I should not have liked to see repeated. Since the
newspapers in question did not enjoy an outstanding reputation
(the reason for this, at that time, I myself did not precisely know),
I regarded them more as the products of anger and envy than the
results of a principled, though perhaps mistaken, point of view.

The So-Called Would Press

53

I was reinforced in this opinion by what seemed to ine the far
more dignified form in which the really big papers answered all
these attacks, or, what seemed to me even more praiseworthy,
failed to mention them; in other words, simply killed them with
silence.

I zealously read the so-called world press {Neue Freie Presse,
Wiener Tageblati, etc.) and was amazed at the scope of what they
offered their readers and the objectivity of individual articles. I
respected the exalted tone, though the flamboyance of the style
sometimes caused me inner dissatisfaction, or even struck me
unpleasantly. Yet this may have been due to the rhythm of life
in the whole metropolis.

Since in those days I saw Vienna in that light, I thought my-
self justified in accepting this explanation of mine as a valid ex-
cuse.

But what sometimes repelled me was the undignified fashion in
which this press curried favor with the Court. There was scarcely
an event in the Hofburg which was not imparted to the readers
either with raptures of enthusiasm or plaintive emotion, and all
this to-do, particularly when it dealt with the ‘wisest monarch’
of all time, almost reminded me of the mating cry of a mountain
cock.

To me the whole thing seemed artificial.

In my eyes it was a blemish upon liberal democracy.

To curry favor with this Court and in such indecent forms was
to sacrifice the dignity of the nation.

This was the first shadow to darken my intellectual relationship
with the ‘big’ Viennese press.

As I had always done before, I continued in Vienna to follow
events in Germany with ardent zeal, quite regardless whether
they were political or cultural. With pride and admiration, I
compared the rise of the Reich with the wasting away of the
Austrian state. If events in the field of foreign politics filled me,
by and large, with undivided joy, the less gratifying aq)ects of
internal life often aroused anxiety and gloom. The struggle
which at that time was being carried on against William II did

54

Mein Kampe

not meet with my approval. I regarded him not only as the
German Emperor, but first and foremost as the creator of a
German fleet. The restrictions of speech imposed on the Kaiser
by the Reichstag angered me greatly because they emanated
from a source which in my opinion really hadn’t a leg to stand on,
since in a single session these parliamentarian imbeciles gabbled
more nonsense than a whole dynasty of emperors, including its
very weakest numbers, could ever have done in centuries.

I was outraged that in a state where every idiot not only
claimed the right to criticize, but was given a seat in the Reichstag
V and let loose upon the nation as a ‘lawgiver,’ the man who bore
■the imperial crown had to take ‘reprimands’ from the greatest
babblers’ club of all time.

' But I was even more indignant that the same Viennese press
which made the most obsequious bows to every rickety horse in
the Court, and flew into convulsions of joy if he accidentally
swished his tail, should, with supposed concern, yet, as it seemed
to me, ill-concealed malice, express its criticisms of the German
Kaiser. Of course it had no intention of interfering with condi-
tions within the German Reich — oh, no, God forbid — but by
placing its finger on these wounds in the friendliest way, it was
fulfilling the duty imposed by the spirit of the mutual alliance,
and, conversely, fulfilling the requirements of journalistic truth,
etc. And now it was poking this finger around in the wound to
its heart’s content.

In such cases the blood rose to my head.

It was this which caused me little by little to view the big
papers with greater caution.

And on one such occasion I was forced to recognize that one of
the anti-Semitic papers, the Deutsches Volksblatt, behaved more
decently.

Another thing that got on my nerves was the loathsome cult
for France which the big press, even then, carried on. A man
couldn t help feeling ashamed to be a German when he saw these
saccharine hymns of praise to the ‘great cultural nation.’ This
wretched licking of France’s boots more than once made me

Transformation into an Anti-Semite

55

throw down one of these ‘world newspapers.’ And on such oc-
casions I sometimes picked up the Volksblatt, which, to be sure,
seemed to me much smaller, but in these matters somewhat
more appetizing. I was not in agreement with the sharp anti-
Semitic tone, but from time to time I read arguments which gave
me some food for thought.

At all events, these occasions slowly made me acquainted with
the man and the movement, which in those days guided Vienna’s
destinies: Dr. Karl Lueger ^ and the Christian Social Party.

When I arrived in Vienna, I was hostile to both of them.

The man and the movement seemed ‘reactionary’ in my eyes.

My common sense of justice, however, forced me to change this
judgment in proportion as I had occasion to become acquainted
with the man and his work; and slowly my fair judgment turned
to unconcealed admiration. Today, more than ever, I regard this
man as the greatest German mayor of all times.

How many of my basic principles were upset by this change
in my attitude toward the Christian Social movement!

My views with regard to anti-Semitism thus succumbed to the
passage of time, and this was my greatest transformation of all.

It cost me the greatest inner soxd struggles, and only after
months of battle between my reason and my sentiments did my
reason begin to emerge victorious. Two years later, my senti-
ment had followed my reason, and from then on became its most
loyal guardian and sentinel.

At the time of this bitter struggle between spiritual education
and cold reason, the visual instruction of the Vienna streets
had performed invaluable services. There came a time when I no
longer, as in the first days, wandered blindly through the mighty
city; now with open eyes I saw not only the buildings but also
the people.

1 Karl Lueger (1844-1910). In 1897, as a member of the anti-Semitic
Christian Social Party, he became mayor of Vienna and kept the post until
his death. At first opposed by the Court for his radical nationalism and
anti-Semitism, toward the end of his career he became more moderate and
was reconciled with the Emneror.

56

Mein Kampf

Once, as I was strolling through the Inner City, I suddenly
encountered an apparition in a black caftan and black hair locks.
Is this a Jew? was my first thought.

For, to be sure, they had not looked like that in Linz. I ob-
served the man furtively and cautiously, but the longer I stared
at this foreign face, scrutinizing feature for feature, the more my
first question assumed a new form:

Is this a German?

As always in such cases, I now began to try to relieve my
doubts by books. For a few hellers I bought the first anti-Semitic
pamphlets of my life. Unfortunately, they all proceeded from
the supposition that in principle the reader knew or even under-
stood the Jewish question to a certain degree. Besides, the tone
for the most part was such that doubts again arose in me, due in
part to the dull and amazingly unscientific arguments favoring
the thesis.

I relapsed for weeks at a time, once even for months.

The whole thing seemed to me so monstrous, the accusations
so boundless, that, tormented by the fear of doing injustice, I
again became anxious and uncertain.

Yet I could no longer very weU doubt that the objects of my
study were not Germans of a special religion, but a people in them-
selves; for since I had begun to concern myself with this question
and to take cognizance of the Jews, Vienna appeared to me in a
diSerent light than before. Wherever I went, I began to see Jews,
and the more I saw, the more sharply they became distinguished

my eyes from the rest of humanity. Particularly the Inner
City and the districts north of the Danube Canal swarmed

mth a people which even outwardly had lost all resemblance to
Germans.

And whatever doubts I may still have nourished were finally
dispelled by the attitude of a portion of the Jews themselves.

^^ong them there was a great movement, quite extensive in
Venna which came out sharply in confirmation of the national
character of the Jews: this was the Zionists.

It looked, to be sure, as though only a part of the Jews ap-

Transformation into an Anti-Semitjs

57

proved this viewpoint, while the great majority condemned and
inwardly rejected such a formulation. But when examined more
closely, this appearance dissolved itself into an unsavory vapor
of pretexts advanced for mere reasons of expedience, not to say
lies. For the so-called liberal Jews did not reject the Zionists as
non-Jews, but only as Jews with an impractical, perhaps even
dangerous, way of publicly avowing their Jewishness.

Intrinsically they remained unalterably of one piece.

In a short time this apparent struggle between Zionistic and
liberal Jews disgusted me; for it was false through and through,
founded on lies and scarcely in keeping with the moral elevation
and purity always claimed by this people.

The cleanliness of this people, moral and otherwise, I must say,
is a point in itself. By their very exterior you could tell that these
were no lovers of water, and, to your distress, you often knew it
jwith your eyes closed. Later I often grew sick to my stomach
’ from the smeU of these caftan-wearers. Added to this, there was

f ''

their unclean dress and their generally unheroic appearance.

All this could scarcely be called very attractive; but it became
positively repulsive when, in addition to their physical uncleanli-
ness, you discovered the moral stains on this ‘chosen people.’

In a short time I was made more thoughtful than ever by my
slowly rising insight into the type of activity carried on by the
Jews in certain fields.

Was there any form of filth or profligacy, particularly in cultu-
ral life, without at least one Jew involved in it?

If you cut even cautiously into such an abscess, you found, like
a maggot in a rotting body, often dazzled by the sudden light —
a kikel^

What had to be reckoned heavily against the Jews in my eyes
was when I became acquainted with their activity in the press,
art, literature, and the theater. All the unctuous reassurances
helped little or nothing. It sufficed to look at a billboard, to study

^ Scwie man nur vorsicMig in eine seiche Geschwidst hineinschnitt, fand
man, wk die Made im fatUenden Leibe, oft ganz geblendet vom piSlzlichen
Lichte, ein JUdlcin.

58

Mein Kampf

the names of the men behind the horrible trash they advertised,
to make you hard for a long time to come. This was pestilence,
spiritual pestilence, worse than the Black Death of olden times,
and the people was being infected with it! It goes without saying
that the lower the intellectual level of one of these art manu-
facturers, the more unlimited his fertility will be, and the
scoundrel ends up like a garbage separator, splashing his filth in
the face of humanity. And bear in mind that there is no limit to,
their number; bear in mind that for one Goethe Nature easily
can foist on the world ten thousand of these scribblers who poison
men’s souls like germ-carriers of the worse sort, on their fellow
men.

It was terrible, but not to be overlooked, that precisely the
Jew, in tremendous numbers, seemed chosen b}' Nature for this
shameful calling.

Is this why the Jews are called the ‘chosen people’?

I now began to examine carefully the names of aU the creators
of unclean products in public artistic life. The result was less and
less favorable for my previous attitude toward the Jews. Regard-
less how my sentiment might resist, my reason was forced to draw
its conclusions.

The fact that nine tenths of all literary filth, artistic trash, and
theatrical idiocy can be set to the account of a people, constituting
hardly one hundredth of all the country’s inhabitants, could
simply not be talked away; it was the plain truth.

^d I now began to e.\amine my beloved ‘world press’ from
this point of view.

And the deeper I probed, the more the object of my former
admiration shriveled. The style became more and more unbear-
able; I could not help rejecting the content as inwardly shallow
and banal; the objectivity of exposition now seemed to me more
akin to lies than honest truth; and the writers were — Jews.

A thousand things which I had hardly seen before now struck
my notice, and others, which had previously given me food for
thought, I now learned to grasp and understand.

I now saw the liberal attitude of this press in a different light;

Transformation into an Anti-Semite

59

the lofty tone in which it answered attacks and its method of
killing them with silence now revealed itself to me as a trick as
clever as it was treacherous; the transfigured raptures of their
theatrical critics were always directed at Jewish writers, and their
disapproval never struck anyone but Germans. The gentle pin-
pricks against William II revealed its methods by their persist-
ency, and so did its commendation of French culture and civiliza-
tion. The trashy content of the short story now appeared to me
as outright indecency, and in the language I detected the accents
of a foreign people; the sense of the whole thing was so obviously
hostile to Germanism that this could only have been intentional.

But who had an interest in this?

Was all this a mere accident?

Gradually I became uncertain.

The development was accelerated by insights which I gained
into a number of other matters. I am referring to the general view of
ethics and morals which was quite openly exhibited by a large part
of the Jews, and the practical application of which could be seen.

Here again the streets provided an object lesson of a sort
which was sometimes positively evil.

The relation of the Jews to prostitution and, even more, to the
white-slave traffic, could be studied in Vienna as perhaps in no
other city of Western Europe, with the possible exception of the
southern French ports. If you walked at night through the streets
and alleys of Leopoldstadt,* at every step you witnessed pro-
ceedings which remained concealed from the majority of the
German people until the War gave the soldiers on the eastern
front occasion to see similar things, or, better expressed, forced
them to see them.

When thus for the first time I recognized the Jew as the cold-
hearted, shameless, and calculating director of this revolting vice
traffic in the scum of the big dty, a cold shudder ran down my
back.

' Second District of Vienna, separated from tKe main part of the city
by the Danube Canal. Formerly the ghetto, it still has a predominantly
Jewish population.

60

Mein Kampf

But then a flame flared up mthin me. I no longer avoided dis-
cussion of the Jewish question; no, now I sought it. And when I
learned to look for the Jew in all branches of cultural and artistic
life and its various manifestations, I suddenly encountered him
in a place where I would least have expected to find him.

When I recognized the Jew as the leader of the Social Democ-
racy, the scales dropped from my eyes. A long soul struggle had
reached its conclusion.

Even in my daily relations with my fellow workers, I ob-
served the amazing adaptability with which they adopted dif-
ferent positions on the same question, sometimes within an in-
terval of a few days, sometimes in only a few hours. It was hard
for me to understand how people who, when spoken to alone,
possessed some sensible opinions, suddenly lost them as soon as
they came under the influence of the masses. It was often enough
to make one despair. When, after hours of argument, I was con-
vinced that now at last I had broken the ice or cleared up some
absurdity, and was beginning to rejoice at my success, on the next
day to my disgust I had to begin all over again; it had all been in
vain. Like an eternal pendulum their opinions seemed to swing
back again and again to the old madness.

All this I could understand: that they were dissatisfied with
their lot and cursed the Fate which often struck them so harshly;
that they hated the employers who seemed to them the heartless
bailiffs of Fate; that they cursed the authorities who in their eyes
were without feeling for their situation; that they demonstrated
against food prices and carried their demands into the streets:
this much could be understood without recourse to reason. But
what ine^tably remained incomprehensible was the boundless
Hatred they heaped upon their own nationality, despising its
fnTlr'’ and dragging its great men

This struggle against their own species, their own dan, their

own homeland, was as senseless as it was incomprehensible It
was unnatural.

It was possible to cure them temporarfly of this vice, but only

The Jew as Leader of Social Democracy

61

for days or at most weeks. If later you met the man you thought
you had converted, he was just the same as before.

His old unnatural state had regained full possession of him.

* « *

I gradually became aware that the Social Democratic press was
directed predominantly by Jews; yet I did not attribute any
special significance to this circumstance, since conditions were
exactly the same in the other papers. Yet one fact seemed con-
spicuous: there was not one paper with Jews working on it which
could have been regarded as truly national, according to my educa-
tion and way of thinkin g.

I swallowed my disgust and tried to read this type of Marxist
press production, but my revulsion became so unlimited in so
doing that I endeavored to become more closely acquainted with
the men who manufactured these compendiums of knavery.

From the publisher down, they were all Jews.

I took all the Social Democratic pamphlets I could lay hands
on and sought the names of their authors: Jews. I noted the
names of the leaders; by far the greatest part were likewise mem-
bers of the 'chosen people,' whether they were representatives
in the Reichsrat or trade-imion secretaries, the heads of organiza-
tions or street agitators. It was always the same gruesome pic-
ture. The names of the Austerlitzes, Davids, Adlers, Ellenbogens,
etc., will remain forever graven in my memory. One thing had
grown dear to me: the party with whose petty representatives I
had been carrying on the most violent struggle for months was, as
to leadership, almost exdusivdy in the hands of a foreign people;
for, to my deep and joyful satisfaction, I had at last come to the
condusion that the Jew was no German.

Only now did I become thoroughly acquainted with the se-
ducer of our people.

A single year of my sojourn in Vienna had sufficed to imbue
me with the conviction that no worker could be so stubborn that

62

Mein Kamee

he would not in the end succumb to better knowledge and better
explanations. Slowly I had become an expert in their own doc-
trine and used it as a weapon in the struggle for my own profound
conviction.

Success almost always favored my side.

The great masses could be saved, if only with the gravest
sacrifice in time and patience.

But a Jew could never be parted from his opinions.

At that time I was still childish enough to try to make the
madness of their doctrine clear to them; in my little circle I talked
my tongue sore and my throat hoarse, thinking I would in-
evitably succeed in convincing them how ruinous their Marxist
madness was; but what I accomplished was often the opposite.
It seemed as though their increased understanding of the destruc-
tive effects of Social Democratic theories and their results only
reinforced their determination.

The more I argued with them, the better I came to know their

dialectic. First they counted on the stupidity of their adversary,
and then, when there was no other way out, they themselves
simply played stupid. If all this didn’t help, they pretended not
to understand, or, if challenged, they changed the subject in a
hurry, quoted platitudes which, if you accepted them, they im-
mediately related to entirely different matters, and then, if again
attacked, gave ground and pretended not to know exactly what
you were talking about. Whenever you tried to attack one of
these apostles, your hand closed on a jelly-like slime which
.divided up and poured through your fingers, but in the next
moment collected again. But if you really struck one of these
fellows so telling a blow that, observed by the audience, he
couldn t help but agree, and if you believed that this had taken
you at least one step forward, your amazement was great the
n^ day. The Jew had not the slightest recollection of the day

n nonsense as though nothing at

aU had happened, and, if indignantly challenged, affected amaze-
ment; he couldn’t imember a thing, except that he had proved
the correctness of his assertions the previous day.

Study of the Foundations of Marxism .

63

Sometimes I stood there thunderstruck.

I didn’t know what to be more amazed at: the agility of their
tongues or their virtuosity at lying.

Gradually I began to hate them.

All this had but one good side: that in proportion as the real
leaders or at least the disseminators of Social Democracy came
within my vision, my love for my people inevitably grew. For
who, in view of the diabolical craftiness of these seducers, could
damn the luckless victims? How hard it was, even for me, to get
the better of this race of dialectical liars ! And how futile was such
success in dealing with people who twist the truth in your mouth,
who without so much as a blush disavow the word they have just
spoken, and in the very next minute take credit for it after
all.

No. The better acquainted I became with the Jew, the more
forgiving I inevitably became toward the worker.

In my eyes the gravest fault was no longer with him, but with
all those who did not regard it as worth the trouble to have mercy
on him, with iron righteousness giving the son of the people his
just deserts, and standing the seducer and corrupter up against
the wall.

Inspired by the experience of daily life, I now began to track
down the sources of the Marxist doctrine. Its effects had become
dear to me in individual cases; each day its success was apparent
to my attentive eyes, and, with some exercise of my imagination,
I was able to picture the consequences. The only remaining
question was whether the result of their action in its ultimate
form had existed in the mind’s eye of the creators, or whether
they themselves were the victims of an error.

I felt that both were possible.

In the one case it was the duty of every thinking man to force
himself to the forefront of the ill-starred movement, thus perhaps
averting catastrophe; in the other, however, the original founders
of this plague of the nations must have been veritable devils; for
only in the brain of a monster — not that of a man — could the
plan of an organization assume form and meaning, whose activity

64

Mein Kampf

must ultimately result in the collapse of hiunan civilization and
the consequent devastation of the world.

In this case the only remaining hope was struggle, struggle
with all the weapons which the human spirit, reason, and will
can devise, regardless on which side of the scale Fate should lay
its blessing.

Thus I began to make myself familiar with the founders of this
doctrine, in order to study the foundations of the movement. If
I reached my goal more quickly than at first I had perhaps ven-
tured to believe, it was thanks to my newly acquired, though at
that time not very profound, knowledge of the Jewish question.
This alone enabled me to draw a practical comparison between
the reality and the theoretical fiim-flam of the founding fathers
of Social Democracy, since it taught me to understand the lan-
guage of the Jewish people, who speak in order to conceal or at
least to veil their thoughts; their real aim is not therefore to be
found in the lines themselves, but slumbers well concealed be-
tween them.

For me this was the time of the greatest spiritual upheaval I
have ever had to go through.

I had ceased to be a weak-kneed cosmopolitan and become an
anti-Semite.

Just once more — and this was the last time — fearful, op-
pressive thoughts came to me in profound anguish.

When over long periods of human history I scrutinized the
activity of the Jewish people, suddenly there rose up in me the
fearful question whether inscrutable Destiny, perhaps for reasons
unknown to us poor mortals, did not with eternal and immutable
resolve, desire the final victory of this little nation.

Was it possible that the earth had been promised as a reward
to this people which lives only for this earth?

^ve we an objective right to struggle for our self-preservation,
or is this justified only subjectively within ourselves?

As I delved more deeply into the teachings of Marxism and
thus m tranquil clarity submitted the deeds of the Jewish people
to contemplation. Fate itself gave me its answer.

Marxism as the Destroyer of Culture

65

The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic princi-
ple of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and
strength by the mass of numbers and their dead weight. Thus it
denies the value of personality in man, contests the significance
of nationality and race, and thereby withdraws from humanity
the premise of its existence and its culture. As a foundation of
the universe, this doctrine would bring about the end of any
order intellectually conceivable to man. And as, in this greatest
of all recognizable organisms, the result of an application of such
a law could only be chaos, on earth it could only be destruction
for the inhabitants of this planet.

If, with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew is victorious over
the other peoples of the world, his crown will be the funeral wreath
of humanity and this planet will, as it did thousands ^ of years
ago, move through the ether devoid of men.

Eternal Nature inexorably avenges the infringement of her'
commands.

Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the
win of the Almighty Creator: hy defending myself against the Jva>,
I am fighting for the work of the Lord.

1 Gianged to ‘millions’ in second edition.

CHAPTER

III

General Political Considerations Based on
My Vienna Period

Tc

ODAY it is my conviction that in general,
aside from cases of unusual talent, a man should not engage in
^public political activity before his thirtieth year. He should not
do so, because up to this time, as a rule, he is engaged in molding
a general platform, on the basis of which he proceeds to examine
the various political problems and finally establishes bis own posi-
tion on them. Only ^ter he has acquired such a basic philosophy,
and the resultant firmness of outlook on the special problems of
the day, is he, inwardly at least, mature enough to be justified in
partaking in the political leadership of the general public.

Otherwise he runs the risk of either having to change his former
position on essential questions, or, contrary to his better know-
ledge and understanding, of clinging to a view which reason and
conviction have long since discarded. In the former case this is
most embarrassing to him personally, since, what with his own
vaciUations, he cannot justifiably expect the faith of his adher-
ents to follow him with the same unswerving firmness as before;
for those led by him, on the other hand, such a reversal on the
part of the leader means perplexity and not rarely a certain feel-
ing of shame toward those whom they hitherto opposed. In the
second case, there occurs a thing which, particularly today, often
confronts us: m the same measure as the leader ceases to believe
m what he says, his arguments become shallow and flat, but he
nes 0 make up for it by vileness in his choice of means. While

The Politician

67

he himself has given up all idea of fighting seriously for his politi-
cal revelations (a man does not die for something which he him-
self does not believe in), his demands on his supporters become
correspondingly greater and more shameless until he ends up by
sacrificing the last shred of leadership and turning into a ‘politi-
cian in other words, the kind of man whose only real conviction
is lack of conviction, combined with offensive impertinence and
an art of lying, often developed to the point of complete shame-
lessness.

If to the misfortune of decent people such a character gets into
a parliament, we may as well realize at once that the essence of
his politics will from now on consist in nothing but an heroic
struggle for the permanent possession of his feeding-bottle for
himself and his family. The more his wife and children depend
on it, the more tenaciously he will fight for his mandate. This
alone will make every other man with political instincts his per-
sonal enemy; in every new movement he will scent the possible
beginning of his end, and in every man of any greatness the dan-
ger which menaces him through that man.

I shall have more to say about this type of parliamentary bed-
bug.

Even a man of thirty will have much to learn in the course of
his life, but this will only be to supplement and fill in the frame-
work provided him by the philosophy he has basically adopted.
When he learns, his learning will not have to be a revision of
principle, but a supplementary study, and his supporters will not
have to choke down the oppressive feeling that they have hitherto
been falsely instructed by him. On the contrary: the visible,
organic growth of the leader will give them satisfaction, for when
he learns, he will only be deepening their own philosophy. And
this in their eyes will be a proof for the correctness of the views
they have hitherto held.

A leader who must depart from the platform of his general
philosophy as such, because he recognizes it to be false, behaves
with decency only if, in recognizing the error of his previous in-
sight, he is prepared to draw the ultimate consequence. In such

68

Mein Kampe

a case he must, at the very least, renounce the public exercise of
any furt her political activity. For since in matters of basic know-
ledge he has once succumbed to an error, there is a possibility
that this will happen a second time. And in no event does he re-
tain the right to continue claiming, not to mention demanding,
the confidence of his fellow citizens.

How little regard is taken of such decency today is attested by
the general degeneracy of the rabble which contemporaneously
feel justified in ‘going into’ politics.

Hardly a one of them is fit for it.

I had carefully avoided any public appearance, though I think
tha t I studied politics more closely than many other men. Only
in the smallest groups did I speak of the things which inwardly
moved or attracted me. This speaking in the narrowest circles
had man y good points: I learned to orate less, but to know people
with their opinions and objections that were often so boundlessly
primitive. And I trained myself, without losing the time and
occasion for the continuance of my own education. It is certain
that nowhere else in Germany was the opportimity for this so
favorable as in Vienna.

General political thinking in the old Danubian monarchy was
just then broader and more comprehensive in scope than in old
Germany, excluding parts of Prussia, Hamburg, and the North
Sea coast, at the same period. In this case, to be sure, I under-
stand, under the designation of ‘Austria,’ that section of the
great Habsburg Empire which, in consequence of its German set-
tlement, not only was the historic cause of the very formation of
this state, but whose population, moreover, exclusively demon-
strated that power which for so many centuries was able to give
this structure, so artificial in the political sense, its inner cultural
life. As time progressed, the existence and future of this state
came to depend more and more on the preservation of this nuclear
cell of the Empire.

Vienna’s Last Revival

<59

If the old hereditary territories were the heart of the Empire,
continually driving fresh blood into the circulatory stream of
political and cultural life, Vienna was the brain and will in on^

Its mere outward appearance justified one in attributing to this
city the power to reign as a unif3dng queen amid such a conglom-
eration of peoples, thus by the radiance of her own beauty causing
us to forget the ugly symptoms of old age in the structure as a
whole.

The Empire might quiver and quake beneath the bloody battles
of the different nationalities, yet foreigners, and especially Ger-
mans, saw only the charming countenance of this city. What
made the deception all the greater was that Vienna at that time
seemed engaged in what was perhaps its last and greatest visible
revival. Under the rule of a truly gifted mayor, the venerable
residence of the Emperors of the old regime awoke once more to a
niraculous youth. The last great German to be bom in the ranks
of the people who had colonized the Ostmark was not officially
numbered among so-called ‘statesmen’; but as mayor of Vienna,
this ‘capital and imperial residence,’ Dr. Lueger conjured up one
amazing achievement after another in, we may say, every field of
economic and culturd municipal politics, thereby strengthening
the heart of the whole Empire, and indirectly becoming a states-
man greater than aU the so-called ‘diplomats’ of the time.

If the conglomeration of nations called ‘Austria’ nevertheless
perished in the end, this does not detract in the least from the
political ability of the Germans in the old Ostmark, but was the
necessary result of the impossibility of permanently maintaining
a state of fifty million people of different nationalities by means
of ten milli on people, unless certain definite prerequisites were
established in time.

The ideas of the German-Austrian were more than grandiose.

He had always been accustomed to living in a great empire and
had never lost his feeling for the tasks bound up with it. He was
the only one in this state who, beyond the narrow boimdaries of
the crown lands, still saw the boundaries of the Reich; indeed,
when Fate finally parted him from the common fatherland, he

70

Mein Kampe

kept on striving to master the gigantic task and preserve for the
German people what his fathers had once wrested from the East
in endless struggles. In this connection it should be borne in mind
that this had to be done with divided energy; for the heart and
memory of the best never ceased to feel for the common mother
country, and only a remnant was left for the homeland.

The general horizon of the German-Austrian was in itself com-
paratively broad. His economic connections frequently embraced
almost the entire multiform Empire. Nearly all the big business

enterprises were in his hands; the directing personnel, both tech-
nicians and officials, were in large part provided by him. He was
also m charge of foreign trade in so far as the Jews had not laid
their hands on this domain, which they have always seized for
their own. Politically, he alone held the state together. Military
service alone cast him far beyond the narrow boundaries of his
homeland. The German-Austrian recruit might join a German
regiment, but the regiment itself might equally well be m Herze-
govina, Vienna, or Galicia. The officers’ corps was still German,
the higher officials predominantly so. Finally, art and science

were German. Aside from the trash of the more modern artistic
development, which a nation of Negroes might just as well have
produced, the German alone possessed and dis s emin a te d a truly
artistic attitude. In music, architecture, sculpture, and painting,
Vienna was the source supplying the entire dual monarchy in in-
exhaustible abundance, without ever seeming to go dry itself.

Finally, the Germans directed the entire foreign policy if we
j disregard a small number of Hungarians.

And yet any attempt to preserve this Empire was in vain, for
the most essential premise was lacking.

For the Austrian state of nationalities there was only one pos-
sibihty of overcoming the centrifugal forces of the individual na-
tions.^ Either the state was centrally governed, hence internally
organized along ffie same Unes, or it was altogether inconceivable.

At vanous lucid moments this insight dawned on the ‘supreme’
auffionty. But as a rule it was soon forgotten or shelved as diffi-
cult of execution. Any thought of a more federative organization

Centrifugal Forces

71

of the Empire was doomed to failure owing to the lack of a strong
political germ-ceU of outstanding power. Added to this were the
internal conditions of the Austrian state which differed essen-
tially from the German Empire of Bismarck. In Germany it was
only a question of overcoming political conditions, since there
was always a common cultural foundation. Above all, the Reich,
aside from little foreign splinters, embraced members of only one
people.

In Austria the opposite was the case.

Here the individual provinces, aside from Hungary, lacked any
political memory of their own greatness, or it had been erased by
the sponge of time, or at least blurred and obscured. In the period
when the principle of nationalities was developing, however, na-
tional forces rose up in the various provinces, and to counteract
them was all the more difficult as on the rim of the monarchy
national states began to form whose populations, racially equiva-
lent or related to the Austrian national spMnters, were now able
to exert a greater power of attraction than, conversely, re-
mained possible for the German-Austrian.

Even Vienna could not forever endure this struggle.

With the development of Budapest into a big city, she had for
the first time a rival whose task was no longer to hold the entire
monarchy together, but rather to strengthen a part of it. In a
short time Prague was to follow her example, then Lemberg,
Laibach, etc. With the rise of these former provincial cities to
national capitals of individual provinces, centers formed for more
or less independent cultural life in these provinces. And only
then did the politico-nationeJ instincts obtain their spiritual
foundation and depth. The time inevitably approached when
these d3mamic forces of the individual peoples would grow
stronger than the force of common interests, and that would be
the end of Austria.

Since the death of Joseph II ^ the course of this development

^ Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor (1765-1790). Until 1780 he shared the
throne with his mother, Maria Theresa. From 1780 till his death he ruled
alone. Hostile to the clergy and nobility, he made a great effort to unify and

72

Mein Kampe

was clearly discernible. Its rapidity depended on a series of fac-
tors which in part lay in the monarchy itself and in part were the
result of the Empire’s momentary position on foreign policy.

If the fight for the preservation of this state was to be taken up
and carried on in earnest, only a ruthless and persistent policy of
centralization could lead to the goal. First of all, the purely
formal cohesion had to be emphasized by the establishment in
principle of a uniform official language, and the administration
had to be given the technical implement without which a unified
state simply cannot exist. Likewise a unified state-consciousness
could only be bred for any length of time by schools and education.
This was not feasible in ten or twenty years; it was inevitably a
matter of centuries; for in aU questions of colonization, persist-
ence assumes greater importance than the energy of the moment.

It goes without saying that the administration as well as the
political direction must be conducted with strict uniformity. To
me it was infinitely instructive to ascertain why this did not
occur, or rather, why it was not done.^ He who was guilty of this
omission was alone to blame for the collapse of the Empire.

Old Austria more than any other state depended on the great-
ness of her leaders. The foundation was lacking for a national
state, which in its national basis always possesses the power of
survival, regardless how deficient the leadership as such may be.
A homogeneous national state can, by virtue of the natural in-
ertia of its i^abitants, and the resulting power of resistance,
sometimes withstand astonishingly long periods of the worst ad-
ministration or leadership without inwardly disintegrating. At
such times it often seems as though there were no more life in
such a body, as though it were dead and done for, but one fine
day the supposed corpse suddenly rises and gives the rest of

modern^ the Empire m accordance with the principles of the Enlighten-

V ' Hungarian crown to Vienna, but re-

r bitter oppreition from the Hungarians. He had a plan to join

ftoTrh n the Palatinate

(to ^ch Havana then belonged), the Austrian Netherlands in return.

Warum dies nichl geschah, oder besser, twvm dies nicht gelan.'

Joseph II

73

humanity astonishing indications of its unquenchable vital force.

It is different, however, with an empire not consisting of similar
peoples, which is held together, not by common blood but by a
common fist. In this case the weakness of leadership will not
cause a hibernation of the state, but an awakening of aU the indi-
vidual instincts which are present in the blood, but cannot de-
velop in times when there is a dominant will. Only by a common
education extending over centuries, by common tradition, com-
mon interests, etc., can this danger be attenuated. Hence the
younger such state formations are, the more they depend on the
greatness of leadership, and if they are the work of outstanding
soldiers and spiritual heroes, they often crumble immediately
after the death of the great solitary founder. But even after cen-
turies these dangers cannot be regarded as overcome; they only
lie dormant, often suddenly to awaken as soon as the weakness of
the common leadership and the force of education and all the
sublime traditions can no longer overcome the impetus of the
vital urge of the individual tribes.

Not to have understood this is perhaps the tragic guilt of the
House of Habsburg.

For only a single one of them did Fate once again raise high the
torch over the future of his country, then it was extinguished for-
ever.

Joseph II, Roman Emperor of the German nation, saw with
fear and trepidation how his House, forced to the outermost
comer of the Empire, would one day inevitably vanish in the
maelstrom of a Babylon of nations unless at the eleventh hour
the omissions of his forefathers were made good. With super-
human power this ‘friend of man’ braced himself against the
negligence of his ancestors and endeavored to retrieve in one
decade what centuries had failed to do. If he had been granted
only forty years for his work, and if after him even two genera-
tions had continued his work as he began it, the miracle would
probably have been achieved. But when, after scarcely ten years
on the throne, worn in body and soul, he died, his work sank with
him into the grave, to awaken no more and deqp forever in the

74

Mein Kampf

Capuchin crypt. His successors were equal to the task neither in
mind nor in will.

When the first revolutionary lightnings of a new era flashed
through Europe, Austria, too, slowly began to catch fire, little by
little. But when the fire at length broke out, the flame was fanned
less by social or general political causes than by dynamic forces
of national origin.

The revolution of 1848 may have been a class struggle every-
where, but in Austria it was the beginning of a new racial war.
By forgetting or not recognizing this origin and putting them-
selves in the service of the revolutionary uprising, the Germans
sealed their own fate. They helped to arouse the spirit of ‘West-
ern democracy,’ which in a short time removed the foundations
of their own existence.

With the formation of a parliamentary representative body
without the previous establishment and crystallization of a com-
mon state language, the cornerstone had been laid for the end of
German domination of the monarchy." From this moment on the
state itself was lost. All that followed was merely the historic
liquidation of an empire.

To follow this process of dissolution was as heartrending as it
was instructive. This execution of an historical sentence was car-
ried out in detail in thousands and thousands of forms. The fact
that a large part of the people moved blindly through the mani-
festations of decay showed only that the gods had willed Aus-
tria’s destruction.

I shall not lose myself in details on this point, for that is not the
function of this book. I shall only submit to a more thorough-
going observation those events which are the ever-unchanging
causes of the decline of nations and states, thus possessing signifi-
cance for our time as well, and which ultimately contributed to
securing the foundations of my own political thinking.

* * #

" ‘ . .war er Grundslein zum Ends V orkerrschajt des Deutschiums in der
Monarchie gelegt warden.’

Parliamentarianism

75

At the head of those institutions which could most clearly have
revealed the erosion of the Austrian monarchy, even to a shop-
keeper not otherwise gifted with sharp eyes, was one which ought
to have had the greatest strength — parliament, or, as it was
called in Austria, the Reichsrat.

Obviously the example of this body had been taken from Eng-
land, the land of classical ‘democracy.’ From there the whole
blissful institution was taken and transferred as unchanged as
possible to Vienna.

The English two-chamber system was solemnly resurrected in
the Abgeordnelenhaus and the Herrenhaus. Except that the
‘houses’ themselves were somewhat different. When Barry raised
his parliament buildings from the waters of the Thames, he thrust
into the history of the British Empire and from it took the decora-
tions for tlie twelve hundred niches, consoles, and pillars of his
magnificent edifice. Thus, in their sculpture and painting, the
House of Lords and the House of Commons became the nation’s
Hall of Fame.

This was where the first difficulty came in for Vienna. For
when Hansen, the Danish builder, had completed the last pin-
nacle on the marble building of the new parliament, there was
nothing he could use as decoration except borrowings from an-
tiquity. Roman and Greek statesmen and philosophers now em-
bellish this opera house of Western democracy, and in symbolic
irony the quadrigae fly from one another in all four directions
above the two houses, in this way giving the best external expres-
sion of the activities that went on inside the building.

The ‘nationalities’ had vetoed the glorification of Austrian
history in this work as an insult and provocation, just as in the
Reich itself it was only beneath the thunder of World War battles
that they dared to dedicate Wallot’s Reichstag Building to the
German people by an inscription.

•' When, not yet twenty years old, I set foot for the first time in
the magnificent building on the Franzensring to attend a session
of the House of Deputies as a spectator and listener, I was seized
with the most conflicting sentiments.

76

Mein Kampf

I had always hated parliament, but not as an institution in
itself. On the contrary, as a freedom-loving man 1 could not even
conceive of any other possibility of government, for the idea of
any sort of dictatorship would, in view of my attitude toward the
House of Habsburg, have seemed to me a crime against freedom
and all reason.

What contributed no little to this was that as a young man, in
consequence of my extensive newspaper reading, I had, without
myself realizing it, been inoculated with a certain admiration for
the British Parliament, of which I was not easily able to rid my-
self. The dignity with which the Lower House there fulfilled its
tasks (as was so touchingly described in our press) impressed me
immensely. Could a people have any more exalted form of self-
government?

But for this very reason I was an enemy of the Austrian parlia-
ment. I considered its whole mode of conduct unworthy of the
great example. To this the following was now added:

The fate of the Germans in the Austrian state was dependent
on their position in the Reichsrat. Up to the introduction of uni-
versal and secret suffrage, the Germans had had a majority,
though an insignificant one, in parliament. Even this condition
was precarious, for the Social Democrats, with their unreliable
attitude in national questions, always turned against German
interests in critical matters affecting the Germans — in order not
to alienate the members of the various foreign nationalities.
Even in those days the Social Democracy could not be regarded
^ a German party. And with the introduction of universal suf-
frage the German superiority ceased even in a purely numerical
Mn^. There was no longer any obstacle in the path of the further
de-Germanization of the state.

For this reason my instinct of national self-preservation caused
me even m those days to have little love for a representative body
m which the Germans were always misrepresented rather than
represented. Yet these were deficiencies which, like so many
others, were attributable, not to the thing in itself, but to the
Austnan state. I still beUeved that if a German majority were

Parliamentakianism

77

restored in the representative bodies, there would no longer be
any reason for a principled opposition to them, that is, as long as
the old state continued to exist at all.

These were my inner sentiments when for the first time I set
foot in these halls as hallowed as they were disputed. For me, to
be sure, they were hallowed only by the lofty beauty of the mag-
nificent building. A Hellenic miracle on German soil!

How soon was I to grow indignant when I saw the lamentable
comedy that unfolded beneath my eyes!

Present were a few hundred of these popular representatives
who had to take a position on a question of most vital economic
importance.

The very first day was enough to stimulate me to thought for
weeks on end.

The intellectual content of what these men said was on a really
depressing level, in so far as you could understand their babbling
at all; for several of the gentlemen did not speak German, but
■ their native Slavic languages or rather dialects. I now had occa-
' sion to hear with my own ears what previously I had known only
from reading the newspapers. A wild gesticulating mass scream-
ing £ill at once in every difierent key, presided over by a good-
natured old uncle who was striving in the sweat of his brow to
revive the dignity of the House by violently ringing his bell and
alternating gentle reproofs with grave admonitions.

I couldn’t help laughing.

A few weeks later I was in the House again. The picture was
changed beyond recognition. The haU was absolutely empty.
Down below everybody was asleep. A few deputies were in their
places, yawning at one another; one was ‘speaking.’ A vice-
president of the House was present, looking into the haU with
obvious boredom.

The first misgivings arose in me. From now on, whenever
time offered me the slightest opportunity, I went back and, with
silence and attention, viewed whatever picture presented itself,
listened to the speeches in so far as they were intelligible, studied
the more or less intelligent faces of the elect of the peoples of

78

Mein Kampf

this woe-begone state — and little by little formed my own
ideas.

A year of this tranquil observation sufficed totally to change or
eliminate my former view of the nature of this institution. My
innermost position was no longer against the misshapen form
which this idea assumed in Austria; no, by now I could no longer
accept the parliament as such. Up till then I had seen the mis-
fortune of the Austrian parliament in the absence of a German
majority, now I saw that its ruination lay in the whole nature
and essence of the institution as such.

A whole series of questions rose up in me.

I began to make myself familiar with the democratic principle
of majority rule as the foundation of this whole institution, but
devoted no less attention to the intellectual and moral values of
these gentlemen, supposedly the elect of the nations, who were
expected to serve this purpose.

Thus I came to know the institution and its representatives at
once.

In the course of a few years, my knowledge and insight shaped
a plastic model of that most dignified phenomenon of modern
times: the parliamentarian. He began to impress hims elf upon
me in a form which has never since been subjected to any essen-
tial change.

Here again the visual instruction of practical reality had pre-
vented me from being stifled by a theory which at first sight
seemed seductive to so many, but which none the less must be
counted among the S3miptoms of human degeneration.

The Western democracy of today is the forerunner of Marxism
which without it would not be thinkable. It provides this world
plague with the culture in which its germs can spread. In its
most extreme form, parliamentarianism created a ‘ monstrosity of
excrement and fire,’ ^ in which, however, sad to say, the ‘fire’
seems to me at the moment to be burned out.

I must be more than thankful to Fate for laying this question

> ‘Spottgcbiirt ans Dreck und Feuer.’ Should be ‘von Dreck uni Feuer.’
Goethe’s Faust, Part 1, 5356: Faust to Mephistopheles.

Parliamentarianism

79

before me while I was in Vienna, for I fear that in Germany at
that time I would have found the answer too easily. For if I had
first encountered this absurd institution known as ‘parliament’ in
Berlin, I might have fallen into the opposite fallacy, and not
without seemingly good cause have sided with those who saw the
salvation of the people and the Reich exclusively in furthering
the power of the imperial idea, and who nevertheless were alien
and blind at once to the times and the people involved.

In Austria this was impossible.

Here it was not so easy to go from one mistake to the other. If
parliament was worthless, the Habsburgs were even more worth-
less — in no event, less so. To reject ‘parliamentarianism’ was
not enough, for the question still remained open: what then? The
rejection and abolition of the Reichsrat would have left the House
of Habsburg the sole governing force, a thought which, especially
for me, was utterly intolerable.

The difficulty of this special case led me to a more thorough
contemplation of the problem as such than would otherwise have
been likely at such tender years.

What gave me most food for thought was the obvious absence
of any responsibility in a single person.

The parliament arrives at some decision whose consequence^
may be ever so ruinous — nobody bears any responsibility for
this, no one can be taken to accoimt. For can it be called an ac-
ceptance of responsibility if, after an unparalleled catastrophe,
the guilty government resigns? Or if the coalition changes, or
even if parliament is itself dissolved?

Can a fluctuating majority of people ever be made responsible
in any case?

Isn’t the very idea of responsibility bound up with the iadivid-{
ual?

But can an individual directing a government be made practi-
cally responsible for actions whose preparation and execution
must be set exclusively to the account of the will and inclination
of a multitude of men?

Or will not the task of a leading statesman be seen, not in the

80

Mein Kampf

birth of a creative idea or plan as such, but rather in the art of
making the brilliance of his projects intelligible to a herd of sheep
and blockheads, and subsequently begging for their kind ap-
proval?

Is it the criterion of the statesman that he should possess the
art of persuasion in as high degree as that of political intelligence
in formulating great polides or decisions? Is the incapacity of a
leader shown by the fact that he does not succeed in winning for a
certain idea the majority of a mob thrown together by more or
less savory accidents?

Indeed, has this mob ever understood an idea before success
prodaimed its greatness?

Isn’t every deed of genius in this world a visible protest of
genius against the inertia of the mass?

And what should the statesman do, who does not succeed
in gaining the favor of this mob for his plans by flattery?

Should he buy it?

Or, in view of the stupidity of his fellow citizens, should he re-
nounce the execution of the tasks which he has recognized to be
vital necessities? Should he resign or should he remain at his post?

In such a case, doesn’t a man of true character find himself in a
hopeless conflict between knowledge and decency, or rather hon-
est conviction?

I^^ere is the dividing line between his duty toward the general
public and his duty toward his personal honor?

Mustn’t every true leader refuse to be thus degraded to the
level of a political gangster?

And conversely, mustn’t every gangster feel that he is cut out
for pohtics, since it is never he, but some intangible mob, which
has to bear the ultimate responsibility?

Mustn’t our principle of parliamentary majorities lead to the
demohtion of any idea of leadership?

Does anyone beUeve that the progress of this world spring!
rom ^e mind of majorities and not from the brains of individuals?

Or does anyone expect that the future will be able to dispen^
Witn this premise of human culture?

The Exclusion of Individual Leadership 81

Does it not, on the contrary, today seem more indispensable
than ever?

By rejecting the authority of the individual and replacing it by
the numbers of some momentary mob, the parliamentary princi-
ple of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of
Nature, though it must be said that this view is not necessarily
embodied in the present-day decadence of om: upper ten thou-
sand. ...

The devastation caused by this institution of modem parlia-
mentary rule is hard for the reader of Jewish newspapers to imag-
ine, unless he has learned to think and examine independently.
It is, first and foremost, the cause of the incredible inundation of
all political life with the most inferior, and I mean the most
inferior, characters of our time. Just as the true leader will with-
draw from all political activity which does not consist primarily
in creative achievement and work, but in bargaining and hag-
gling for the favor of the majority, in the same measure this
activity will suit the small mind and consequently attract it.

The more dwarfish one of these present-day leather-merchants
is in spirit and ability, the more clearly his own insight makes
him aware of the lamentable figure he actually cuts — that much
more will he sing the praises of a system which does not demand
of him the power and genius of a giant, but is satisfied with the
craftiness of a village mayor, preferring in fact this kind of wis-
dom to that of a Pericles. And this kind doesn’t have to torment
himself with responsibility for his actions. He is entirely re-
moved from such worry, for he well knows that, regardless what
the result of his ‘statesmanlike’ bungling may be, his end has
long been written in the stars: one day he will have to cede his|
place to another equally great mind, for it is one of the character- |
istics of this decadent system that the number of great statesmen
increases in proportion as the stature of the individual decreases^
With increasing dependence on parliamentary majorities it will
inevitably continue to shrink, since on the one hand great minds
will refuse to be the stooges of idiotic incompetents and big-
mouths, and on the other, conversely, the representatives of the

82

Mein Kampe

majority, hence of stupidity, hate nothing more passionately
than a superior mind.

For such an assembly of wise men of Gotham, it is always a
consolation to know that they are headed by a leader whose in-
telligence is at the level of those present: this will give each one
the pleasure of shining from time to time and, above aU, if
Tom can be master, what is to prevent Dick and Harry from
having their turn too?

This invention of democracy is most intimately related to a
quality which in recent times has grown to be a real disgrace, to
wit, the cowardice of a great part of our so-called ‘leadership.’
What luck to be able to hide behind the skirts of a so-called ma-
jority in all decisions of any real importance!

Take a look at one of these.politic^l^ndits. How anxiously
he begs the approve of the majority for every measure, to assure
himself of the necessary accomplices, so he can unload the re-
sponsibility at any time. And this is one of the main reasons why ^
this t)pe of political activity is always repulsive and hateful to
any man w'ho is decent at heart and hence courageous, while it
attracts all low characters — and anyone who is unwilling to
take personal responsibility for his acts, but seeks a shield, is a
cowardly scoundrel. "When the leaders of a nation consist of such
vile creatures, the results will soon be deplorable. Such a nation
will be u nab le to muster t he courage fo r any determined act: it
will prefer to accept any dishonor , e ven the most shameful, r ather
t han rise to a deci sion; fo r there is no one wh o is prepared of his
own accord to pl edge his p erson and his head for the execution of
a dauntless resolve.

For there is one thing which we must never forget: in this, too,
the majority can never replace the man. It is not only a repre-
'sentative of stupidity, but of cowardice as well. And no more
thmi^ hundred empty heads make one wise man will an heroic
.teision arise f roin a himdred cowards.

The less the responsibility of the individual leader, the more
numerous will be those who, despite their most insignificant
stature, feel called upon to put their immortal forces in the

The Exclusion of Individual Leadership 83

service of the nation. Indeed, they will be unable to await their
turn; they stand in a long line, and with pain and regret count the
number of those waiting ahead of tliem, calculating almost the
precise hour at which, in aU probability, their turn will come.
Consequently, they long for any change in the office hovering
before their eyes, and are thankful for any scandal which thins
out the ranks ahead of them. And if some man is unwilling to
move from the post he holds, this in their eyes is practically a
breach of a holy pact of solidarity. They grow vindictive, and
they do not rest until the impudent fellow is at last overthrown,
thus turning his warm place back to the public. And, rest as-
sured, he won’t recover the position so easily. For as soon as one
of these creatures is forced to give up a position, he will try at
once to wedge his way into the ‘waiting-line’ unless the hue and
cry raised by the others prevents him.

The consequence of all this is a terrifying turn-over in the mosl|
important offices and positions of such a state, a result which isi
always harmful, but sometimes positively catastrophic. For it is|
not only the simpleton and incompetent who will fall victim to;
this custom, but to an even greater extent the real leader, if Fate
somehow manages to put one in this place. As soon as this fact
has been recognized, a solid front will form against him, especially
if such a mind has not arisen from their own ranks, but none the
less dares to enter into this exalted society. For on principle
these gentry like to be among themselves and they hate as a
common enemy any brain which stands even slightly above the
zeros. And in this respect their instinct is as much sharper as it
is deficient in everything else.

The result will be a steadily expanding intellectual impoverish-
ment of the leading circles. The result for the nation and the
state, everyone can judge for himself, excepting in so far as he
hims elf is one of these kind of ‘leaders.’

Old Austria possessed the parliamentary r6gime in its purest
form.

To be sure, the prime ministers were always appointed by the
Emperor and King, but this very appointment was nothing but

84

Mein Kampf

the execution of the parliamentary will. The haggling and bar-
gaining for the individual portfolios represented Western democ-
racy of the first water. And the results corresponded to the
principles applied. Particularly the change of individual personal-
ities occurred in shorter and shorter terms, ultimately becoming a
veritable chase. In the same measure, the stature of the ‘states-
men’ steadily diminished until finally no one remained but that
type of parliamentary gangster whose statesmanship could only
be measured and recognized by their ability in pasting together
the coalitions of the moment; in other words, concluding those
pettiest of political bargains which alone demonstrate the fitness
of these representatives of the people for practical work.

Thus the Viennese school transmitted the best impressions in
this field.

But what attracted me no less was to compare the ability and
knowledge of these representatives of the people and the tasks
which awaited them. In this case, whether I liked it or not, I was
impelled to examine more closely the intellectual horizon of these
elect of the nations themselves, and in so doing, I could not avoid
giving the necessary attention to the processes which lead to the
discovery of these ornaments of our public life.

The way in which the real ability of these gentlemen was ap-
plied and placed in the service of the fatherland — in other words,
the technical process of their activity — was also worthy of
thorough study and investigation.

The more determined I was to penetrate these inner conditions,
to study the personalities and material foundations with daunt-
less and penetrating objectivity, the more deplorable became my
total picture of parliamentary life. Indeed, this is an advisable
procedure in dealing with an institution which, in the person of
its representatives, feels obliged to bring up ‘ objectivity ’ in every
second sentence as the only proper basis for every investigation
and opinion. Investigate these gentlemen themselves and the laws
of their sordid existence, and you will be amazed at the result,
y There is no principle which, objectively considered, is as false
as that of parliamentarianism.

‘Public Opinion’

85

Here we may totally disregard the manner in which our fine
representatives of the people are chosen, how they arrive at their
office and their new dignity. That only the tiniest fraction of
them rise in fulfillment of a general desire, let alone a need, will
at once be apparent to anyone who realizes that the political
understanding of the broad masses is far from being highly enough
developed to arrive at definite general political views of their own
accord and seek out the suitable personalities.

The thing we designate by the word ‘public opinion’ rests only
in the smallest part on experience or knowledge which the in-
dividual has acquired by himself, but rather on an idea which is
inspired by so-called ‘enlightenment,’ often of a highly persistent
and obtrusive type.

Just as a man’s denominational orientation is the result of up-
bringing, and only the religious need as such slmnbers in his soul,
the political opinion of the masses represents nothing but the
final result of an incredibly tenacious and thorough manipulation
of their mind and soul.

By far the greatest share in their political ‘education,’ which
in this case is most aptly designated by the word ‘propaganda,’
falls to the account of the press. It is foremost in performing this
‘work of enlightenment’ and thus represents a sort of school for
growii-ups. This instruction, however, is not in the hands of the
state, but in the claws of forces which are in part very inferior.
In Vienna as a very young man I had the best opportunity to
become acquainted with the owners and spiritual manufacturers
of this machine for educating the masses. At first I could not
help but be amazed at how short a time it took this great evil
power within the state to create a certain opinion even where it
meant totally falsifying profound desires and views which surely
existed among the public. In a few days a ridiculous episode had
become a significant state action, while, conversely, at the same
time, vital problems fell a prey to public oblivion, or rather were
simply filched from the memory and consciousness of the m^ses.

Thus, in the course of a few weeks it was possible to conjure
up names out of the void, to associate them with incredible hopes

88

Mein Kampe

sentatives of the people, with regard to profession or even in-
dividual abilities, gives a picture as incoherent as it is usually
deplorable. For no one can believe that these men elected by the
nation are elect of spirit or even of intelligence! It is to be hoped
that no one will suppose that the ballots of an electorate which is
anything else than brilliant will give rise to statesmen by the
hundreds. Altogether we cannot be too sharp in condemning the
absurd notion that geniuses can be born from general elections.
In the first place, a nation only produces a real statesman once
in a blue moon and not a hundred or more at once; and in the
second place, the revulsion of the masses for every outstanding
genius is positively instinctive. Sooner will a camel pass through
a needle’s eye than a great man be ‘discovered’ by an election. _

In world history the man who really rises above the norm of
the broad average usually announces himself personally.

As it is, however, five hundred men, whose stature is to say the
least modest, vote on the most important affairs of the nation,
appoint governments which in every single case and in every
special question have to get the approval of the exalted assembly,
so that policy is really made by five hundred.

And that is just what it usually looks like.

But even leaving the genius of these representatives of the
people aside, bear in mind how varied are the problems awaiting
attention, in what widely removed fields solutions and decisions
must be made, and you will realize how inadequate a governing
institution must be which transfers the ultimate right of decision
to a mass assembly of people, only a tiny fraction of which possess
knowledge and experience of the matter to be treated. The most
important economic measures are thus submitted to a forum,
only a tenth of whose members have any economic education to
show. This is nothing more nor less than placing the ultimate
decision in a matter in the hands of men totally lacking in every
prerequisite for the task.

The same is true of every other question. The decision is always
made by a majority of ignoramuses and incompetents, since the
composition of this institution remains unchanged while the

The Majority Principle

89

problems under treatment extend to nearly every province of
public life and would thereby presuppose a constant turn-over in
the deputies who are to judge and decide on them, since it is im-
possible to let the same persons decide matters of transportation
as, let us say, a question of high foreign policy. Otherwise these
men would all have to be universal geniuses such as we actually
seldom encounter once in centuries. Unfortunately we are here
confronted, for the most part, not with ‘thinkers,’ but with
dilettantes as limited as they are conceited and inflated, intel-
lectual demi-monde of the worst sort. And this is the source of the
often incomprehenable frivolity with which these gentry speak
and decide on things which would require careful meditation even
in the greatest minds. Measures of the gravest significance for
the future of a whole state, yes, of a nation, are passed as though
a game of scJiaJkopf or tarock^ which would certainly be better
suited to their abilities, lay on the table before them and not the
fate of a race.

Yet it would surely be unjust to believe that all of the deputies
in such a parliament were personally endowed with so little sense
of responsibility.

No, by no means.

But by forcing the individual to take a position on such ques-
tions completely ill-suited to him, this system gradually ruins
his character. No one will summon up the courage to declare:
‘ Gentlemen, I believe we understand nothing about this matter.
I personally certainly do not.’ (Besides, this would change mat-
ters little, for surely this kind of honesty would remain totally
unappreciated, and what is more, our friends would scarcely
allow one honorable jackass to spoil their whole game.) Anyone
with a knowledge of people will realize that in such an illustrious
company no one is eager to be the stupidest, and in certain circles
honesty is alm ost synonymous with stupidity.

Thus, even the representative who at first was honest is thrown

* Schafkopf is a four-handed card-game widely played in Germany.
Tarock. Three-handed card-game of Italian origin (tarocco) , popular in Aus-
tria and southern Germany.

90

Mein Kampf

into this track of general falsehood and deceit. The very convic-
tion that the non-participation of an individual in the business
would in itself change nothing kills every honorable impulse
which may rise up in this or that deputy. And finally, moreover,
he may tell himself that he personally is far from being the worst
among the others,^ and that the sole effect of his collaboration is
perhaps to prevent worse things from happening.

It will be objected, to be sure, that, though the individual
deputy possesses no special understanding in this or that matter,
his position has been discussed by the fraction which directs the
policy of the gentleman in question, and that the fraction has its
special committees which are more than adequately enlightened
by experts anyway.

At first glance this seems to be true. But then the question
arises: Why are five hundred chosen when only a few possess the
necessary wisdom to take a position in the most important
matters?

And this is the worm in the apple!

It is not the aim of our present-day parliamentarianism to con-
stitute an assembly of wise men, but rather to compose a band of
mentally dependent nonentities who are the more easily led in
certain directions, the greater is the personal limitation of the
individual. That is the only -way of carrying on party politics in
the malodorous present-day sense. And only in this way is it
possible for the real wirepuller to remain carefully in the back-
ground and never personally be called to responsibility. For
then every decision, regardless how harmful to the nation, will
not be set to the account of a scoundrel visible to all, but will be
unloaded on the shoulders of a whole fraction.

And thereby every practical responsibility vanishes. For re-
sponsibility can lie only in the obligation of an individual and not
in a parliamentary bull session.

Such an institution can only please the biggest liars and sneaks
of the sort that shun the light of day, because it is inevitably
hateful to an honorable, straightforward man who welcomes
personal responsibility.

^ ‘der Schlechteste unter den Anderen,’

Germanic Versus Jewish Democracy

91

And that is why this tj'pe of democracy has become the instru-
ment of that race which in its inner goals must shun the light of
day, now and in all ages of the future. Only the Jew can praise
an institution whicU is as dirty and false as he hims elf.

* * *

Juxtaposed to this is the truly Germanic democracy character-
ized by the free election of a leader and his obligation fully to
assume all responsibility for his actions and omissions. In it
there is no majority vote on indiAudual questions, but only the
decision of an individual who must answer with his fortune and
his life for his choice.

If it be objected that under such conditions scarcely anyone
would be prepared to dedicate his person to so risky a task, there
is but one possible answer:

Thank the Lord, Germanic democracy means just this: that
any old climber or moral slacker cannot rise by devious paths to
govern his national comrades,' but that, by the very greatness of
the responsibility to be assumed, incompetents and weaklings are
frightened off.

But if, nevertheless, one of these scoundrels should attempt to
sneak in, we can find him more easily, and mercilessly challenge
him: Out, cowardly scoundrel! Remove your foot, you are be-
smirching the steps; the front steps of the Pantheon of history
are not for sneak-thieves, but for heroes!

* # *

’ ‘ Volksgenosse.’ Brockhaus defines: In contrast to the concept of citizen
which is based on the idea of legal equality in the state, the designation for
all members of the same national community {VolksgemeiHschafl), especially
those who form a working association in the service of the nation as a whole.
As used by the National Socialists, it might be translated as ‘racial com-
rades.’ I have chosen the more neutral term ‘national comrades’ because
the National Socialists did not coin the term and it occurs frequently in the
speeches of parliamentarians who were not even noted for their anti-Semi-
tism.

92

Mein Kaupf

I had fought my way to this conduaon after two years at«
tendance at the Vienna parliament.

After that I never went back.

The parliamentary regime shared the chief blame for the weak-
ness, constantly increasing in the past few years, of the Habsburg
state. The more its activities broke the predominance of the
Germans, the more the country succumbed to a system of play-
ing off the nationalities against one another. In the Reichsrat
itself this was always done at the expense of the Germans and
thereby, in the last analysis, at the expense of the Empire; for by
the turn of the century it must have been apparent even to the
simplest that the monarchy’s force of attraction would no longer
be able to withstand the separatist tendencies of the provinces.

On the contrary.

The more pathetic became the means which the state had to
employ for its preservation, the more the general contempt for it
increased. Not only in Hungary, but also in the separate Slavic
provinces, people began to identify themselves so little with the
common monarchy that they did not regard its weakness as their
own disgrace. On the contrary, they rejoiced at such symptoms
of old age; for they hoped more for the Empire's death than for
its recovery.

In parliament, for the moment, total collapse was averted by
undignified submissiveness and acquiescence at every extortion,
for which the German had to pay in the end; and in the country,
by most skillfully playing off the different peoples against each
other. But the general line of development was nevertheless di-
rected against the Germans. Especially since Archduke Francis
Ferdinand ^ became heir apparent and began to enjoy a certain

» Archduke Francis Ferdinand (1863-1914), brother of Francis Joseph,
became heir apparent to the Austrian throne in 1889 when Archduke Rudolf,
only son of Francis Joseph, committed suicide. Francis Ferdinand, who
favored a reorganization of the monarchy giving the Slavic population
equality with the Germans and Hungarians, was assassinated at Sarajevo
on June 28, 1914. Hitler’s talk of Czechization is an exaggeration, to say
the least. The most that can be said is that some of the leaders of the
monarchy favored collaboration with the Slavic upper classes and some relief
for the oppressed Slavic populations.

Habsbtjrg and the German Element

93

iijjBuence, there began to be some plan and order in the policy of
Czechization from above. With all possible means, this future
ruler of the dual monarchy tried to encourage a policy of de-
Germanization, to advance it himself or at least to sanction it.
Purely German towns, indirectly through government official-
dom, were slowly but steadily pushed into the mixed-language
danger zones. Even in Lower Austria this process began to make
increasingly rapid progress, and many Czechs considered Vienna
their largest city.

The central idea of this new Habsburg, whose family had
ceased to speak anything but Czech (the Archduke’s wife, a
former Czech countess, had been morganatically married to the
Prince — she came from circles whose anti-German attitude
was traditional), was gradually to establish a Slavic state in
Central Europe which for defense against Orthodox Russia
should be placed on a strictly Catholic basis. Thus, as the
Habsburgs had so often done before, religion was once again
put into the service of a purely political idea, and what was
worse — at least from the German viewpoint — of a catastrophic
idea.

The result was more than dismal in many respects.

Neither the House of Habsburg nor the Catholic Church re-
ceived the expected reward.

Habsburg lost the throne, Rome a great state.

For by employing religious forces in the service of its political
considerations, the crown aroused a spirit which at the outset it
had not considered possible.

In answer to the attempt to exterminate the Germans in the
old monarchy by every possible means, there arose the Pan-
German movement in Austria.

By the eighties the basic Jewish tendency of Manchester
liberalism had reached, if not passed, its high point in the mon-
archy. The reaction to it, however, as with everything in old
Austria, arose primarily from a social, not from a national stand-
point. The instinct of self-preservation forced the Germans to
adopt the sharpest measures of defense. Only secondarily did

94

Mein Kampp

economic considerations begin to assume a decisive influence.
And so, two party formations grew out of the general political
rnnfiisi nn ^ the one with the more national, the other with the more
social, attitude, but both highly interesting and instructive for
the future.

After the depressing end of the War of 1866, the House of
Habsburg harbored the idea of revenge on the battlefleld. Only
the death of Emperor Max of Mexico, whose unfortunate ex-
pedition was blamed primarily on Napoleon III and whose
abandonment by the French aroused general indignation, pre-
vented a closer collaboration with France. Habsburg neverthe-
less lurked in wait. If the War of 1870-71 had not been so unique
a triumph, the Vienna Court would probably have risked a
bloody venture to avenge Sadowa. But when the first amazing
and scarcely credible, but none the less true, tales of heroism
arrived from the battlefields, the ‘wisest’ of all monarchs recog-
nized that the hour was not propitious and put the best possible
face on a bad business.

But the heroic struggle of these years had accomplished an
even mightier miracle; for with the Habsburgs a change of posi-
tion never arose from the urge of the innermost heart, but from
> the compulsion of circumstances. However, the German people
of the old Ostmark were swept along by the Reich's frenzy of
victory, and looked on with deep emotion as the dream of tbmr
fathers was resurrected to glorious reality.

For make no mistake: the truly German-minded Austrian had,
even at Koniggratz,^ and from this time on, recognized the tragic
but necessary prerequisite for the resurrection of a Reich which
would no longer he — and actually was not — aflBicted with the

* The Battle of Koniggratz (Sadowa), on July 3, 1866, was a decisive vic-
tory of the Prussians over the Austrians. By the ensuing treaties of Nikols-
burg and Prague, the Seven Weeks’ War was ended; the North-German
states formed a North-German Confederation under Pr ussian leadership,
and the South-Gennan states were forced into a defensive allianm with
Prussia (against France). This was an important step toward the founding
of the German Empire in 1871.

State Authority Not an End in Itself

95

foul morass^ of the old Union.^ Above all, he had come to under-
stand thoroughly, by his own suffering, that the House of Habs-
burg had at last concluded its historical mission and that the new
Reich could choose as Emperor only him whose heroic convictions
made him worthy to bear the ‘Crown of the Rhine.’ But how
much more was Fate to be praised for accomplishing this in-
vestiture in the scion of a house which in Frederick the Great had
given the nation a gleaming and eternal symbol of its resurrection.

But when after the great war the House of Habsburg began
with desperate determination slowly but inexorably to extermi-
nate the dangerous German element in the dual monarchy (the
inner convictions of this element could not be held in doubt), for
such would be the inevitable result of the Slavixation policy —
the doomed people rose to a resistance such as modem German
history had never seen.

For the first time, men of national and patriotic mind became
rebels.

Rebels, not against the nation and not against the state as such,
but rebels against a kind of government which in their conviction
would inevitably lead to the destmction of their own nationality.

For the first time in modern German history, traditional dy-
nastic patriotism parted ways with the national love of fatherland
and people.

The Pan-German movement in German-Austria in the nineties
is to be praised for demonstrating in clear, unmistakable terms
that a state authority is entitled to demand respect and protection
only when it meets the interests of a people, or at least does not
harm them.

There can be no such thing as state authority as an end in itself,
for, if there were, every tyranny in this world would be unassail-
able and sacred.

‘ ‘ dem faidigen Marasmus des alien Bundes ieJtafkt sein soUte.’

" Customs Union (ZoUverein). The German Customs Union (Zollverein)
between the various large and petty independent states that then made up
Germany developed between 1815 and 1830 under the leadership of Prussia.
It formed the basis for the subsequent unification of the German states.

96

Mein Kampf

If, by the instrument of governmental power, a nationality is
led toward its destruction, then rebellion is not only the right of
every member of such a people — it is his duty.

And the question — when is this the case? — is decided not by
theoretical dissertations, but by force and — results.

Since, as a matter of course, all governmental power claims the
duty of preserving state authority — regardless how vicious it is,
betraying the interests of a people a thousandfold — the national
instinct of self-preservation, in overthrowing such a power and
achieving freedom or independence, will have to employ the same
'Weapons by means of which the enemy tries to main tain his
power. Consequently, the struggle will be carried on with ‘legal’
means as long as the power to be overthrown employs such means;
but it wiU not shun illegal means if the oppressor uses thpm

In general it should not be forgotten liat the highest aim of
human existence is not the preservation of a state, let alone a
government, but the preservation of the species.

And if the species itself is in danger of being oppressed or ut-
terly eliminated, the question of legality is reduced to a sub-
ordinate r61e. Then, even if the methods of the ruling power are
alleged to be legal a thousand times over, nonetheless the op-
pressed people’s instinct of self-preservation remains the loftiest
justification of their struggle with every weapon.

Only through recognition of this principle have wars of libera-
tion against internal and external enslavement of nations on this
earth come down to us in such majestic historical PYamp l es .

Human law cancels out state law.

And if a people is defeated in its struggle for human rights,
this merely means that it has been found too light in the scale of
destiny for the happiness of survival on this earth. For when a
people is not willing or able to fight for its existence — Provi-
dence in its eternal justice has decreed that people’s end.

The world is not for cowardly peoples.

The Pan-German Movement

97

How easy it is for a tyranny to cover itself with the doak of
so-called ‘legality’ is shown most dearly and penetratingly by the
example of Austria.

The legal state power in those days was rooted in the anti-
German soil of parliament with its non-German majorities —
and in the equally anti-German ruling house. In these two factors
the entire state authority was embodied. Any attempt to change
the destinies of the German-Austrian people from this position
was absurd. Hence, in the opinions of our friends the worshipers
of state authority as such and of the ‘legal’ way, all resistance
woidd have had to be shunned, as incompatible with legal
methods. But this, with compelling necessity, would have meant
the end of the German people in the monarchy — and in a very
short time. And, as a matter of fact, the Germans were saved
from this fate only by the collapse of this state.

The bespectacled theoretician, it is true, would still prefer to
die for his doctrine than for his people.

Since it is men who make the laws, he believes that they live
for the sake of these laws.

The Pan-German movement in Austria had the merit of com-
pletely doing away with this nonsense, to the horror of all theo-
reticed pedants and other fetish-worshiping isolationists in the
government.

Since the Habsburgs attempted to attack Germanism with all
possible means, this party attacked the ‘exalted’ ruling house
itself, and without mercy. For the first time it probed into this
rotten state and opened the eyes of hundreds of thousands. To
its credit be it said that it released the glorious concept of love of
fatherland from the embrace of this sorry dynasty.

In the early days of its appearance, its following was extremely
great, threatening to become a veritable avalanche. But the suc-
cess did not last. When I came to Vienna, the movement had long
been overshadowed by the Christian Social Party which had
meanwhile attained power — and had indeed been reduced to
almost complete insignificance.

This whole process of the growth and passing of the Pan-^

98

Mein Kampf

German movement on the one hand, and the unprecedented rise
of the Christian Social Party on the other, was to assume the
deepest significance for me as a classical object of study.

When I came to Vienna, my sympathies were fully and whoUy
on the side of the Pan-German tendency.

That they mustered the courage to cry ‘Eoch Hohenzollern’
impressed me as much as it pleased me; that they still regarded
themselves as an only temporarily severed part of the German
Reich, and never let a moment pass without openly attesting this
fact, inspired me with joyful confidence; that in all questions re-
garding Germanism they showed their colors without reserve, and
never descended to compromises, seemed to me the one still
passable road to the salvation of our people; and I could not
understand how after its so magnificent rise the movement should
have taken such a sharp decline. Even less could I understand
how the Christian Social Party at this same period could achieve
such immense power. At that time it had just reached the apogee
of its glory.

As I set about comparing these movements. Fate, accelerated
by my otherwise sad situation, gave me the best instruction for
an understanding of the causes of this riddle.

I shall begin my comparisons with the two men who may be
regarded as the leaders and fmmders of the two parties: Georg
von Schdnerer and Dr. Karl Lueger.

From a purely human standpoint they both tower far above
the scope and stature of so-called parliamentary figures. Amid
the morass of general political corruption their whole life re-
mained pure and unassailable. Nevertheless my personal sym-
pathy lay at first on the side of the Pan-German Schonerer, and
turned only little by little toward the Christian Social leader as
well.

Compared as to abilities, Schdnerer seemed to me even then the
better and more profound thinker in questions of principle. He
foresaw the inevitable end of the Austrian state more clearly and
correctly than anyone else. If, especially in the Reich, people had
paid more attention to his warnings against the Habsburg mon-

SCHONEEER AND LUEGER

99

archy, the calamity of Germany’s World War against all Europe
would never have occurred.

But if Schonerer recognized the problems in their innermost
essence, he erred when it came to men.

Here, on the other hand, lay Dr. Lueger’s strength.

He had a rare knowledge of men and in particular took good
care not to consider people better than they are. Consequently,
he reckoned more with the real possibilities of life while Schonerer
had but little understanding for them. Theoretically speaking,
all the Pan-German’s thoughts were correct, but since he lacked
the force and astuteness to transmit his theoretical knowledge to
the masses — that is, to put it in a form suited to the recepti\aty
of the broad masses, which is and remains exceedingly limited —
all his knowledge was visionary wisdom, and could never become
practical reality.

And this lack of actual knowledge of men led in the course of
time to an error in estimating the strength of whole movements
as well as age-old institutions.

Finally, Schonerer realized, to be sure, that questions of basic
philosophy were involved, but he did not understand that only
the broad masses of a people are primarily able to uphold such
well-nigh religious convictions.

Unfortunately, he saw only to a limited extent the extra-
ordinary limitation of the will to fight in so-called ‘bourgeois’
circles, due, if nothing else, to their economic position which
malfps the individual fear to lose too much and thereby holds him
in check.

And yet, on the whole, a philosophy can hope for victory only
if the broad masses adhere to the new doctrine and declare their
readiness to undertake the necessary struggle.

From this deficient understanding of the importance of the
lower strata of the people arose a completely inadequate con-
ception of the social question.

In all this Dr. Lueger was the opposite of Schonerer.

His thorough knowledge of men enabled him to judge the
possible forces correctly, at the same time preserving him from

100

Mein Kampf

underestimating existing institutions, and perhaps for this very
reason taught him to make use of these institutions as instru-
ments for the achievement of his purposes. /j-

He understood only too well that the political fighting power
of the upper bourgeoisie at the present time was but slight and
inadequate for achieving the victory of a great movement. He
therefore laid the greatest stress in his political activity on
winning over the classes whose existence was threatened and
therefore tended to spur rather than paralyze the will to fight.
Likewise he was inclined to make use of all existmg implements
of power, to incline mighty existing institutions in his favor,
drawing from these old sources of power the greatest possible
profit for his own movement.

Thus he adjusted his new party primarily to the middle class
menaced with destruction, and thereby assured himself of a fol-
lowing that was difiicult to shake, whose spirit of sacrifice was as
great as its fighting power. His policy toward the Catholic
Church, fashioned with infinite shrewdness, in a short time won
over the younger clergy to such an extent that the old Clerical
Party was forced either to abandon the field, or, more wisely, to
join the new party, in order dowly to recover position after
position.

To take this alone as the characteristic essence of the man
would be to do him a grave injustice. For in addition to being
an astute tactician, he had the qualities of a truly great and
brilhant reformer: though here, too, he observed the limits set by
a precise knowledge of the existing possibilities as well as his own
personal abilities.

It was an infinitely practical goal that this truly significant
man had set himself. He wanted to conquer Vienna. Vienna was
the heart of the monarchy; from this city the last flush of life
flowed out into the sickly, old body of the crumbling empire.
The healthier the heart became, the more the rest of the body was
bound to revive: an idea, correct in principle, but which could be
applied only for a certain limited time.

And herein lay this man’s weakness.

Causes oe Schonerer’s Failure

101

What he had done as mayor of Vienna is immortal in the best
sense of the word; ^ but he could no longer save the monarchy, it
was too late.

His opponent, Schonerer, had seen this more clearly.

All Dr. Lueger’s practical efforts were am a z i ngly successful;
the hopes he based on them were not realized.

Schonerer’s efforts were not successful, but his most terrible
fears came true.

Thus neither man realized his ultimate goal. Lueger could no
longer save Austria, and Schonerer could no longer save the
German people from ruin.

It is infinitely instructive for our present day to study the
causes for the failure of both parties. This is particularly useful
for my friends, since in many points conditions today are similar
to then and errors can thereby be avoided which at that time
caused the end of the one movement and the sterility of the other.

To my mind, there were three causes for the collapse of the
Pan-German movement in Austria.

In the first place, its unclear conception of the significance of
the social problem, especially for a new and essentially revolution-
ary party.

Since Schonerer and his followers addressed themselves princi-
pally to bourgeois circles, the result was bound to be very feeble
and tame.

Though some people fail to suspect it, the German bourgeoisie,
especially in its upper circles, is pacifistic to the point of positive
sdf-abnegation, where internal affairs of the nation or state are
concerned. In good times — that is, in this case, in times of good
government — such an attitude makes these classes extremely
valuable to the state; but in times of an inferior regime it is pos-
itively ruinous. To make possible the waging of any really serious
struggle, the Pan-German movement should above all have
dedicated itself to winning the masses. That it failed to do so
deprived it in advance of the elemental impetus which a wave of
its kind simply must have if it is not in a short time to ebb away.

* ‘unsterhlich im hesten Sinne des Works*

102

Mein Kampf

Unless this principle is borne in mind and carried out from the
very start, the new party loses all possibility of later making up
for what has been lost. For, by the admission of numerous mod-
erate bourgeois elements, the basic attitude of the movement will
always be governed by them and thus lose any further prospect
of winning appreciable forces from the broad masses. As a result,
such a movement will not rise above mere grumbling and criticiz-
ing. The faith bordering more or less on religion, combined with
a similar spirit of sacrifice, will cease to exist; in its place will arise
an effort gradually to grind off the edges of struggle by means of
‘positive’ collaboration; that is, in this case, by acceptance of the
erifitin g order, thus ultimately leading to a putrid peace.

And this is what happened to the Pan-German movement be-
cause it had not from the outset laid its chief stress on winning
supporters from the circles of the great masses. It achieved
‘bourgeois respectability and a muffled radicalism.’

From this error arose the second cause of its rapid decline.

At the time of the emergence of the Pan-Gennan movement
the situation of the Germans in Austria was already desperate.
From year to year the parliament had increasingly become an
institution for the slow destruction of the German people. Any
attempt at salvation in the eleventh hour could offer even the
slightest hope of success only if this institution were eliminated.

Thus the movement was faced with a question of basic im-
portance:

Should its members, to destroy parliament, go into parliament,
in order, as people used to say, ‘to bore from within,’ or should
they carry on the struggle from outside by an attack on this in-
stitution as such?

They went in and they came out defeated.

To be sure, they couldn’t help but go in.

To carry on the struggle against such a power from outside
means to arm with unflinching courage and to be prepared for
endless sacrifices. You seize the bull by the horns, you suffer
many heavy blows, you are sometimes thrown to the earth, some-
times you get up with broken limbs, and only after the hardest

Pan-Germans and Parliament

103

contest does victory reward the bold assailant. Only the greatness
of the sacrifices will win new fighters for the cause, until at last
tenacity is rewarded by success.

But for this the sons of the broad masses are required.

They alone are determined and tough enough to carry through
the fight to its bloody end.

And the Pan-German movement did not possess these broad
masses; thus no course remained open but to go into parliament.

It would be a mistake to believe that this decision was the re-
sult of long soul torments, or even meditations; no, no other idea
entered their heads. Participation in this absurdity was only the
sediment resulting from general, unclear conceptions regarding
the significance and effect of such a participation in an institution
which had in principle been recognized as false. In general, the
party hoped that this would facilitate the enlightenment of the
broad masses, since it would now have an opportunity to speak
before the ‘forum of the whole nation.’ Besides, it seemed plaus-
ible that attacking the root of the evil was bound to be more
successful than storming it from outside. They thought the se-
curity of the individual fighter was increased by the protection
of parliamentary immunity, and that this could only enhance the
force of the attack.

In reality, it must be said, things turned out very differently.

The forum before which the Pan-German deputies spoke had
not become greater but smaller; for each man speaks only to the
circle which can hear him, or which obtains an account of his
words in the newspapers.

And, not the halls of parliament, but the great public meeting,
represents the largest direct forum of listeners.

For, in the latter, there are thousands of people who have come
only to hear what the speaker has to say to them, while in the
halls of parliament there are only a few hundreds, and most of
these are present only to collect their attendance fees, and cer-
tainly not to be illuminated by the wisdom of this or that fellow
‘representative of the people.’

And above all:

104

Mein Kampe

This is always the same public, which will never learn anything
new, since, aside from the intelligence, it is lacking in the very
rudiments of will.

Never will one of these representatives of the people honor a
superior truth of his own accord, and place himself in its service.

No, this is something that not a single one of them will do un-
less he has reason to hope that by such a shift he may save his
mandate for one more session. Only when it is in the air that the
party in power will come off badly in a coming election, will these
ornaments of virility shift to a party or tendency which they
presume will come out better, though you may be confident that
this change of position usually occurs amidst a cloudburst of
moral justifications. Consequently, when an existing party ap-
pears to be falling beneath the disfavor of the people to such an
extent that the probability of an annihilating defeat threatens,
such a great shift will always begin: then the parliamentary rats
leave the party ship.

All this has nothing to do with better knowledge or intentions,
but only with that prophetic gift which warns these parliamentary
bedbugs at the right moment and causes them to drop, again and
again, into another warm party bed.

But to speak to such a ‘forum’ is really to cast pearls before the
well-known domestic beasts. It is truly not worth while. The
result can be nothing but zero.

And that is just what it was.

The Pan-German deputies could talk their throats hoarse: the
effect was practically nil.

The press either killed them with silence or mutilated their
speeches in such a way that any coherence, and often even the
sense, was twisted or entirely lost, and public opinion received a
very poor picture of the aims of the new movement. What the
various gentlemen said was quite unimportant; the important
thing was what people read about them. And this was an extract
from their speedies, so disjointed that it could — as intended —
only seem absurd. The only forum to which they really spoke con-
sisted of five hundred parliamentarians, and that is enough said.

Pan-Gkrmans and Parliament

105

But the worst was the following:

The Pan-German movement imuld count on success only if it
realized from the very first day that what was required was not a
new party, but a new philosophy. Only the latter could produce
the inward power to fight this gigantic struggle to its end. And
for this, only the very best and courageous minds can serve as
leaders./,

“v

If the struggle for a philosophy is not lead by heroes prepared
to make sacrifices, there wiU, in a short time, cease to be anj’'
warriors willing to die. The man who is fighting for his own
existence cannot have much left over for the community.

In order to maintain this requirement, every man must know
that the new movement can offer the present nothing but honor
and fame in posterity.^ The more easily attainable posts and
offices a movement has to hand out, the more inferior stuff * it
will attract, and in the end these political hangers-on overwhelm
a successful party in such number that the honest fighter of
former days no longer recognizes the old movement and the new
arrivals definitely reject him as an unwelcome intruder. When
this happens, the ‘mission ’ of such a movement is done for.

As soon as the Pan-German movement sold its soul to parlia-
ment, it attracted ‘parliamentarians’ instead of leaders and
fighters.

Thus it sank to the level of the ordinary political parties of the
day and lost the strength to oppose a catastrophic destiny with
the defiance of martyrdom. Instead of fighting, it now learned to
make speeches and ‘negotiate.’ And in a short time the new
parliamentarian found it a more attractive, because less danger-
ous, duty to fight for the new philosophy with the ‘spiritual’
weapons of parliamentary eloquence, than to risk his own life, if

* ‘amser Ehre und Ruhm der Nachwell der Gegenwart nichts bieten kann.’
Second edition has improved this jumble to: ‘ . . . dass die neue Benvegung
Ekre und Ruhm vor der Nachwdt, in der Gegenwart aber nichts bieten kann'
(That the new movement can offer honor and fame in the eyes of posterity,
but nothing in the present.)

’ Second edition has: ‘the greater the number of inferior characters , . .’

106

Mein Kampe

necessary, by throwing himself into a struggle whose issue was
uncertain and which in any case could bring him no profit.

Once they had members in parliament, the supporters outside
began to hope and wait for miracles which, of course, did not
occur and could not occur. For this reason they soon became
impatient, for even what they heard from their own deputies was
by no means up to the expectations of the voters. This was per-
fectly natural, since the hostile press took good care not to give
the people any faithful picture of the work of the Pan-German
deputies.

The more the new representatives of the people developed a
taste for the somewhat gentler variety of ‘revolutionary’ struggle
in parliament and the provincial diets, the less prepared they were
to return to the more dangerous work of enlightening the broad
masses of the people.

The mass meeting, the only way to exert a truly effective, be-
cause personal, influence on large sections of the people and thus
possibly to win them, was thrust more and more into the back-
ground.

Once the platform of parliament was definitely substituted for
the beer table of the meeting hall, and from this forum speeches
were poured, not into the people, but on the heads of their so-
called ‘elect,’ the Pan-German movement ceased to be a move-
ment of the people and in a short time dwindled into an academic
discussion club to be taken more or less seriously.

Consequently, the bad impression transmitted by the press
was in no way corrected by personal agitation at meetings by the
individual gentlemen, with the result that finally the word ‘Pan-
German’ began to have a very bad sound in the ears of the broad
masses.

For let it be said to aU our present-day fops and knights of the
pen: the greatest revolutions in this world have never been di-
rected by a goose-quill!

No, to the pen it has always been reserved to provide their
theoretical foundations.

But the power which has always started the greatest religious

The Importance op the Spoken Word

107

and political avalanches in history rolling has from tiTni* im l
memorial been the magic power of the spoken word, and tha^
alone.

Particularly the broad masses of the people can be moved only
by the power of speech. And all great movements are popular'i
movements, volcanic eruptions of human passions and pmnHn na]
sentiments, stirred either by the cruel Goddess of Distress or by
the firebrand of the word hurled among the masses; they are not
the lemonade-like outpourings of literary aesthetes and drawing-
room heroes.

Only a storm of hot passion can turn the destinies of peoples, j
and he alone can arouse passion who bears it within himself. I

It alone gives its chosen one the words which like hammer
blows can open the gates to the heart of a people.

But the man whom passion fails and whose lips are sealed —
he has not been chosen by Heaven to proclaim its wiU.

Therefore, let the writer remain by his ink-well, engaging in
‘theoretical’ activity, if his intelligence and ability are equal to
it; for leadership he is neither bom nor chosen.

A movement with great aims must therefore be anxioudy on
its guard not to lose contact with the broad masses.

It must examine every question primarily from this standpoint
and make its decisions accordingly.

It must, furthermore, avoid everything which might diminish
or even weaken its ability to move the masses, not for ‘ demagogic ’
reasons, but in the simple knowledge that without the mighty
force of the mass of a people, no great idea, however lofty and
noble it may seem, can be realized.

Hard reality alone must determine the road to the goal; un-
willingness to travel unpleasant roads only too often in this
world means to renounce the goal; which may or may not be
what you want.

As soon as the Pan-German movement by its parliamentary
attitude had shifted the weight of its activity to parliament in-
stead of the people, it lost the future and instead won cheap suc-
cesses of the moment.

108

Mein Kampf

It chose the easier struggle and thereby became unworthy of
ultimate victory.

Even in Vienna I pondered this very question with the greatest
care, and in the failure to recognize it saw one of the main causes
of the collapse of the movement which in those days, in my opin-
ion, was predestined to undertake the leadership of the German
element.

The first two mistakes which caused the Pan-German move-
ment to founder were related to each other. Insuflicient know-
ledge of the iimer driving forces of great revolutions led to an
insuf&cient estimation of the importance of the broad masses of
the people; from this resulted its insufficient interest in the social
question, its deficient and inadequate efforts to win the soul of
the lower classes of the nation, as weU as its over-favorable atti-
tude toward parliament.

If they had recognized the tremendous power which at all
times must be attributed to the masses as the repository of rev-
olutionary resistance, they would have worked differently in
social and propagandist matters. Then the movement’s center
of gravity would not have been shifted to parliament, but to the
workshop and the street.

Likewise the third error finds its ultimate germ in failure to
recognize the value of the masses, which, it is true, need superior
minds to set them in motion in a given direction, but which then,
like a flywheel, lend the force of the attack momentum and uni-
form persistence.

The hard struggle which the Pan-Germans fought with the
Catholic Church can be accounted for only by their insufficient
understanding of the spiritued nature of the people.

• The causes for the new party’s violent attack on Rome were
as follows:

As soon as the House of Habsburg had definitely made up its
mind to reshape Austria into a Slavic state, it seized upon every
means which seemed in any way suited to this tendency. Even
religious institutions were, without the slightest qualms, har-
nessed to the service of the new ‘state idea’ by this xmscrupulous
ruling house.

The ‘ Away-prom-Rome’ Movement

109

The use of Czech pastorates and their spiritual shepherds was
but one of the many means of attaining this goal, a general
Slavization of Austria.

The process took approximately the following form:

Czech pastors were appointed to German communities; slowly
but surely they began to set the interests of the Czech people
above the interests of the churches, becoming germ-ceUs of the
de-Germanization process.

The German clergy did practically nothing to counter these
methods. Not only were they completely useless for carrying on
this struggle in a positive German sense; they were even unable
to oppose the necessary resistance to the attacks of the adversary.
Indirectly, by the misuse of religion on the one hand, and owing
to insufficient defense on the other, Germanism was slowly but
steadily forced back.

If in small matters the situation was as described, in big things,
unfortunately, it was not far different.

Here, too, the anti-German efforts of the Habsburgs did not
encounter the resistance they should have, especially on the part
of the high clergy, while the defense of German interests sank
completely into the background.

The general impression could only be that the Catholic clergy
as such was grossly infringing on German rights.

Thus the Church did not seem to feel with the German people,
but to side unjustly with the enemy. The root of the whole evil
lay, particularly in Schdnerer’s opinion, in the fact that the di-
recting body of the Catholic Church was not in Germany, and
that for this very reason alone it was hostile to the interests of our
nationality.

The so-called cultural problems, in this as in virtually every
other connection in Austria at that time, were relegated almost
entirely to the background. The attitude of the Pan-German
movement toward the Catholic Church was determined far less
by its position on science, etc., than by its inadequacy in the
championing of German rights and, conversely, its continued aid
and comfort to Slavic arrogance and greed.

110

Mein Kampf

Georg Schonerer was not the man to do things by halves. He
took up the struggle toward the Church in the conviction that by
it alone he could save the German people. The 'Away-from-
Rome’^ movement seemed the most powerful, though, to be
sure, the most difficult, mode of attack, which would inevitably
shatter the hostile citadel. If it was successful, the tragic church
schism in Germany would be healed, and it was possible that the
inner strength of the Empire and the German nation would gain
enormously by such a victory.

But neither the premise nor the inference of this struggle was
correct.

Without doubt the national force of resistance of the Catholic
clergy of German nationality, in all questions connected with
Germanism, was less than that of their non-German, particularly
Czech, brethren.

Likewise only an ignoramus could fail to see that an offensive
in favor of German interests was something that practically never
occurred to the German clergyman.

And anyone who was not blind was forced equally to admit
that this was due primarily to a circumstance under which all of
us Germans have to suffer severely: that is, the objectivity of
our attitude toward our nationality as well as everything else.

While the Czech clergymeui was subjective in his attitude to-
ward his people and objective only toward the Church, the Ger-
man pastor was subjectively devoted to the Church and remained
objective toward the nation. A phenomenon which, to our mis-
fortune, we can observe equally well in thousands of other

This is by no means a special legacy of Catholicism, but with
us it quickly corrodes almost every institution, whether it be
governmental or ideal.

Just compare the position which our civil servants, for example,
take toward the attempts at a national awakening with the posi-
tion which in such a case the civil servants of another people
would take. Or does anyone believe that an officers’ corps any-
where else in the world would subordinate the interests of the

* ‘ Los-von-Rom.’ See note, p. lo.

The ‘ AwAY-rROM-RoME’ Movement

111

nation amid mouthings about ‘state authority,’ in the way that
has been taken for granted in our country for the last five years,
in fact, has been viewed as especially meritorious? In the Jewish
question, for example, do not both denominations today take a
standpoint which corresponds neither to the requirements of the
nation nor to the real needs of religion? Compare the attitude of
a Jewish rabbi in all questions of even the slightest importance
for the Jews as a race with the attitude of by far the greatest part
of our clergy — of both denominations, if you please!

We always find this phenomenon when it is a question of de-
fending an abstract idea as such.

‘State authority,’ ‘democracy,’ ‘pacifism,’ ‘international soli-
darity,’ etc., are all concepts which with us nearly always be-
come so rigid and purely doctrinaire that subsequently all purely
national vital necessities are judged exclusively from their stand-
point.

This catastrophic way of considering all matters from the angle
of a preconceived opinion kills every possibility of thinking one-
self subjectively into a matter which is objectively opposed to
one’s own doctrine, and finally leads to a total reversal of means
and ends. People will reject any attempt at a national uprising
if it can take place only after the elimination of a bad, ruinous
regime, since this would be an offense against ‘state authority,’
and ‘state authority’ is not a means to an end, but in the eyes of
such a fanatical objectivist rather represents the aim itself, which
is sufficient to fill out his whole lamentable life. Thus, for ex-
ample, they would indignantly oppose any attempt at a dictator-
ship, even if it was represented by a Frederick the Great and the
momentary political comedians of a parliamentary majority
were incapable dwarfs or really inferior characters, just because
the law of democracy seems holier to such a principle-monger ^
than the welfare of a nation. The one will therefore defend the
worst tyranny, a t3Tanny which is ruining the people, since at

^ ‘ Primsipienbock.’ Second edition has ‘ PHnzipienblock’ This lather
startling combination would mean a ‘bloc* or 'coalition* of men standing on
principle.

112

Mein Kampf

the moment it embodies ‘state authority,’ while the other rejects
even the most beneficial government as soon as it fails to satisfy
his conception of ‘ democracy.’

In exactly the same way, our German pacifist will accept in
silence the bloodiest rape of our nation at the hands of the most
vicious military powers if a change in this state of affairs can be
achieved only by resistance — that is, force — for this would be
contrary to the spirit of his peace society. Let the international
German Socialist be plundered in solidarity by the rest of the
world, he will accept it with brotherly affection and no thought
of retribution or even defense, just because he is — a German.

This may be a sad state of affairs, but to change a thing means
to recognize it first.

The same is true of the weak defense of German interests by a
part of the clergy.

It is neither malicious Ul will in itself, nor is it caused, let us
say, by commands from ‘above’; no, in such a lack of national
determination we see merely the result of an inadequate educa-
tion in Germanism from childhood up and, on the other hand, an
unlimited submission to an idea which has become an idol.

Education in democracy, in socialism of the international
variety, in pacifism, etc., is a thing so rigid and exclusive, so
purely subjective from these points of view, that the genereil
pictme of the remaining world is colored by this dogmatic con-
ception, while the attitude toward Germanism has remained ex-
ceedingly objective from early youth. Thus, the pacifist, by giv-
ing himself subjectively and entirely to his idea, wiU, in the
presence of any menace to his people, be it ever so grave and im-
just, always (in so far as he is a German) seek after the objective
right and never from pure instinct of self-preservation join the
ranks of his herd and fight with them.

To what extent this is also true of the different religions is
shown by the following:

Protestantism as such is a better defender of the interests of
Germanism, in so far as this is grounded in its genesis and later
tradition; it fails, however, in the moment when this defense of

The ‘ Away-from-Rome’ Movement

113

national interests must take place in a province which is either
absent from the general line of its ideological world and tradi-
tional development, or is for some reason rejected.

Thus, Protestantism will always stand up for the advancement
of all Germanism as such, as long as matters of inner purity or
national deepening^ as well as German freedom are involved,
since all these things have a firm foundation in its own being; but
it combats with the greatest hostility any attempt to rescue the
nation from the embrace of its most mortal enemy, since its at-
titude toward the Jews just happens to be more or less dogmati-
cally established. Yet here we are facing the question without
whose solution all other attempts at a German reawakening or
resurrection are and remain absolutely senseless and impossible.

In my Vienna period I had leisure and opportunity enough for
an unprejudiced examination of tins question too, and in my daily
contacts was able to establish the correctness of this view a
thousand times over.

In this focus of the most varied nationalities, it immediately
becomes clearly apparent that the German pacifist is alone in
always attempting to view the interests of his own nation ob-
jectively, but that the Jew will never regard those of the Jewish
people in this way; that only the German Socialist is ‘ interna-
tional’ in a sense which forbids him to beg fi’stice for his own
people except by whimpering and whining in the midst of his
international comrades, but never a Czech or a Pole, etc.; in
short, I recognized even then that the misfortune lies only partly
in these doctrines, and partly in our totally inadequate education
in national sentiment and a resultant lack of devotion to our
nation.

Thus, the first theoretical foundation for a struggle of the Pan-
German movement against Catholicism as such was lacking.

Let the German people be raised from childhood up with that
exclusive recognition of the rights of their own nationality, and
let not the hearts of children be contaminated with the curse of
our ‘objectivity,’ even in matters regarding the preservation of

* ‘Nationale Verliefung.'

114

Mein Kampe

their own ego. Then in a short time it will be seen that (presup-
posing, of course, a radically national government) in Germany,
as in Ireland, Poland, or France, the Catholic wiU always be a
German.

The mightiest proof of this was provided by that epoch wMch
for the last time led our nation into a life-and-death struggle
before the judgment seat of history in defense of its own existence.

As long as leadership from above was not lacking, the people
fulfilled their duty and obligation overwhelmingly. Whether
Protestant pastor or Catholic priest, both together contributed
infinitely in maintaining for so long our power to resist, not only
at the front but also at home. In these years and particularly at
the first flare, there really existed in both camps but a single holy
German Reich, for whose existence and future each man turned
to his own heaven.

The Pan-German movement in Austria should have asked it-
self one question: Is the preservation of German- Austrianism
possible under a Catholic faith, or is it not? If yes, the political
party had no right to concern itself with religious or denomi-
national matters; if not, then what was needed was a religious
reformation and never a political party.

Anyone who thinks he can arrive at a religious reformation by
the detour of a political organization only shows that he has no
glimmer of knowledge of the development of religious ideas or
dogmas and their ecclesiastical consequences.

Verily a man cannot serve two masters. And I consider the
foundation or destruction of a religion far greater tVian the
foundation or destruction of a state, let alone a party.

And let it not be said that this ^ is only a defense against the
attacks from the other side!

It is certain that at all times unscrupulous scoundrels have not
shunned to make even religion the instrument of thpi r political
bargains (for that is what such rabble almost always and ex-
clusively deal in) : but just as certainly it is wrong to make a re-
ligious denomination responsible for a number of tramps who

* Second edition has ‘these attacks’ in place of ‘this.’

The ‘ Away-prom-Rome’ Movement

115

abuse it in exactly the same way as they would probably make
anything else serve their low instincts.

Nothing can better suit one of these parliamentarian good-for-
nothings and lounge-lizards than when an opportunity is offered
to justify his political swindling, even after the fact.

For as soon as religion or even denomination is made responsi-
ble for his personal vices and attacked on that ground, this shame-
less liar sets up a great outcry and calls the whole world to witness
that his behavior has been completely justified and that he alone
and his eloquence are to be thanked for saving religion of the
Church. The public, as stupid as it is forgetful, is, as a rule, pre-
vented by the very outcry from recognizing the real instigator of
the struggle or else has forgotten him, and the scoundrel has to all
intents and purposes achieved his goal.

The sly fox knows perfectly well that this has nothing to do
\vnth religion; and he will silently laugh up his sleeve while his
honest but clumsy opponent loses the game and one day, despair-
ing of the loyalty and faith of humanity, withdraws from it all.

And in another sense it would be unjust to make religion as
such or even the Church responsible for the failings of individuals.
Compare the greatness of the visible organization before our eyes
with the average fallibility of man in general, and you will have
to admit that in it the relation of good and evil is better than
anywhere else. To be sure, even among the priests themselves
there are those to whom their holy ofbce is only a means of satis-
fying their political ambition, yes, who in political struggle for-
get, in a fashion which is often more than deplorable that they
are supposed to be the guardians of a higher truth and not the
representatives of lies and slander — but for one such unworthy
priest there are a thousand and more honorable ones, shepherds
most loyally devoted to their mission, who, in our present false
and decadent period, stand out of the general morass like little
islands.

No more than I condemn, or would be justified in condemning,
the Church as such when a degenerate individual in a cassock
obscenely transgresses against morality, do I condemn it when

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Mein Kampe

one of the many others besmirches and betrays his nationality
at a timp when this is a daily occurrence anyway. Particularly
today, we must not forget that for one such Ephialtes there are
thousands who with bleeding heart feel the misfortune of their
people and like the best of our nation long for the hour in which
Heaven will smile on us again.

And if anyone replies that here we are not concerned with such
everyday problems, but with questions of principle and truth or
dogmatic content, we can aptly counter with another question:

If you believe that you have been chosen by Fate to reveal the
truth in this matter, do so; but then have the courage to do so,
not indirectly through a political party — for this is a swindle;
but for today’s evil substitute your future good.

But if you lack courage, or if your good is not quite clear even
to yourself, then keep your fingers out of the matter; in any case,
do not attempt by roundabout sneaking through a political move-
ment to do what you dare not do with an open vizor.

Political parties have nothing to do with religious problems,
as long as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the
morals and ethics of the race; just as religion cannot be amal-
gamated with the scheming of political parties.

When Church dignitaries make use of religious institutions or
doctrines to injure their nation, we must never follow them on
this path and fight with the same methods.

\ For the political leader the religious doctrines and institutions of
I Aw people must always remain inviolable; or else he has no right to
\be in politics, but should become a reformer, if he has what it takes!

Especially in Germany any other attitude would lead to a
catastrophe.

In my study of the Pan-German movement and its struggle
against Rome, I then, and even more in the years to come, ar-
rived at the following conviction; This movement’s inadequate
appreciation of the importance of the social problem cost it the
truly militant mass of the people; its entry into parliament took
away its mighty impetus and burdened it with aU the weaknesses
peculiar to this institution; the struggle against the Catholic

Concentration on the Enemy

117

Church made it impossible in numerous small and middle circles,
and thus robbed it of countless of the best elements that the na-
tion can call its own.

The practical result of the Austrian KuUurkanipf'^ was next to
nil.

To be sure, it succeeded in tearing some hundred thousand
members away from the Church, yet without causing it any
particular damage. In this case the Church really had no need
to shed tears over the lost ‘lambs’; for it lost only those who had
long ceased to belong to it. The difference between the new ref-
ormation and the old one was that in the old days many of the
best people in the Church turned away from it through profound
religious conviction, while now only those who were lukewarm to
begin with departed, and this from ‘considerations’ of a political
nature.

And precisely from the politick standpoint the result was just
as laughable as it was sad.

Once again a promising political movement for the salvation
of the German nation had gone to the dogs because it had not been
led with the necessary cold ruthlessness, but bad lost itself in
fields which could only lead to disintegration.

For one thing is assuredly true:

The Pan-German movement would never have made this mis-
take but for its insufficient understanding of the psyche of the
broad masses. If its leaders had known that to achieve any suc-
cess one should, on purely psychological grounds, never show the
masses two or more opponents, since this leads to a total disin-
tegration of their fighting power, for this reason alone the thrust

^ The struggle carried on by Bismarck against the Catholic Church be-
came known as the KuUurkampf from the words of Rudolf Virchow in the
Prussian Diet (January 17, 1873): ‘The contest has taken on the character
of a great cultural struggle.’ The struggle was laigdy released by the
proclamation of papal infallibility by the Vatican Coundl in July, 1870.
The Jesuits were expelled from Germany, Church schools were subjected to
state control, civil marriage was made obligatory, religious orders were dis-
solved, etc.

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Mein Kampf

of the Pan-Gennan movement would have been directed at a
single adversary. Nothing is more dangerous for a political party
tVian to be led by those jacks-of-aH-trades who want everything
but can never really achieve anything.

Regardless how much room for criticism there was in any re-
ligious denomination a political party must never for a moment
lose sight of the fact that in aU previous historical experience a
purely political party in such situations had never succeeded in
producing a religious reformation. And the aim of studying his-
tory is not to forget its lessons when occasion arises for its practi-
cal application, or to decide that the present situation is different
after all, and that therefore its old eternal truths are no longer
applicable; no, the purpose of studying history is precisely its
lesson for the present. The man who cannot do this must not
conceive of himself as a political leader; in reality he is a shallow,
though usually very conceited, fool, and no amount of good will
can excuse his practical incapacity.

In general the art of aU truly great na.tional leaders at all times
consists among other things primarily in not dividing the atten-
tion of a people, but in concentrating it upon a single foe. The
more unified the application of a people’s will to fight, the greater
will be the magnetic attraction of a movement and the mightier
will be the impetus of the thrust. It belongs to the genius of a
great leader to make even adversaries far removed from one an-
other seem to belong to a single category, because in weak and
uncertain characters the knowledge of having different enemies
can only too readily lead to the beginning of doubt in their own
right.

Once the wavering mass sees itself in a struggle against too
many enemies, objectivity will put in an appearance, throwing
open the question whether all others are really wrong and only
their own people or their own movement are in the right.

And this brings about the first paralysis of their own power.
Hence a multiplicity of different adversaries must always be
combined so that in the eyes of the masses of one’s own supporters
the struggle is directed against only one enemy. This strengthens

Anti-Semitism on a Religious Basis

119

their faith in their own right and enhances their bitterness against
those who attack it.

That the old Pan-Gierman movement failed to understand this
deprived it of success.

Its goal had been correct, its will pure, but the road it chose
was wrong. It was like a mountain climber who keeps the peak
to be climbed in view and who sets out with the greatest deter-
mination and energy, but pays no attention to the trail, for his
eyes are always on his goal, so that he neither sees nor feels out
the character of the ascent and thus comes to grief in the end.

The opposite state of affairs seemed to prevail with its great
competitor, the Christian Social Party.

The road it chose was correct and weU-chosen, but it lacked
dear knowledge of its goal.

In nearly all the matters in which the Pan-German movement
was wanting, the attitude of the Christian Sodal Party was cor-
rect and well-planned.

It possessed the necessary understanding for the importance of
the masses and from the very first day assured itself of at least a
part of them by open emphasis on its social character. By aiming
essentially at winning the small and lower middle classes and
artisans, it obtained a following as enduring as it was seff-sacrific-
ing. It avoided any struggle against a religious institution and
thus secured the support of that mighty organization which the
Church represents. Consequently, it possessed only a single truly
great central opponent. It recognized the value of large-scale
propaganda and was a virtuoso in influencing the psychological
instincts of the broad masses of its adherents.

If nevertheless it was unable to achieve its goal and dream of
saving Austria, this was due to two deficiencies in its method and
to its lack of darity concerning the aim itself.

The anti-S emitism of the new movement was based on religious
ideas instead of racial knowledge. The reason for the intrusion of
this mistake was the same which brought about the second fallacy.

If the Christian Social Party wanted to save Austria, then in
the opinion of its founders it must not operate from the stand-

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Mein Kampf

point of the racial principle, for if it did a dissolution of the state
would, in a short time, inevitably occur. Particularly the situa-
tion in Vienna itself, in the opinion of the party leaders, de-
manded that all points which would divide their following should
be set aside as much as possible, and that all unifying conceptions
be emphasized in their stead.

At that time Vienna was so strongly permeated especially with
Czech elements that only the greatest tolerance with regard to
aU racial questions could keep them in a party which was not anti-
German to begin with. If Austria were to be saved, this was in-
dispensable. And so they attempted to win over small Czech
artisans who were especially numerous in Vienna, by a struggle
against liberal Manchesterism, and in the struggle against the
Jews on a religious basis they thought they had discovered a
slogan transcending all of old Austria’s national differences.

It is obvious that combating Jewry on such a basis could pro-
vide the Jews with small cause for concern. If the worst came to
the worst, a splash of baptismal water could always save the busi-
ness and the Jew at the same time. With such a superficial moti-
vation, a serious scientific treatment of the whole problem was
never achieved, and as a result far too many people, to whom thic
type of anti-Semitism was bound to be incomprehensible, were
repelled. The recruiting power of the idea was limited almost
exclusively to intellectually limited circles, unless true knowledge
were substituted for purely emotional feeling. The intelligentsia
remained aloof as a matter of principle. Thus the whole move-
ment came to look more and more like an attempt at a new con-
version of the Jews, or perhaps even an expression of a certain
competitive envy. And hence the struggle lost the character of
an inner and higher consecration; to many, and not necessarily
the worst people, it came to seem immoral and reprehensible.
Lacking was the conviction that this was a vital question for all
humanity, with the fate of all non-Jewish peoples depending on
its solution.

Through this half-heartedness the anti-Semitic line of the
Christian Social Party lost its value.

Sham Anti-Semitism

121

It was a sham anti-Semitism which was almost worse than none
at all; for it lulled people into security; they thought they had the
foe by the ears, while in reality they themselves were being led
by the nose.

In a short time the Jew had become so accustomed to this
type of anti-Semitism that he would have missed its disappear-
ance more than its presence inconvenienced him.

If in this the Christian Social Party had to make a heavy sacri-
fice to the state of nationalities, they had to make an even greater
one when it came to championing Germanism as such.

They could not be 'nationalistic’ unless they wanted to lose
the ground from beneath their feet in Vienna. They hoped that
by a pussy-footing evasion of this question they could still save
the Habsburg state, and by that very thing they encompassed
its ruin. And the movement lost the mighty source of power
which alone can fill a political party with inner strength for any
length of time.

Through this alone the Christian Social Party became a party
like any other.

In those days I followed both movements most attentively.
One, by feeling the beat of its innermost heart, the other, carried
away by admiration for the unusual man who even then seemed
to me a bitter symbol of all Austrian Germanism.

When the mighty funeral procession bore the dead mayor from
the City Hall toward the Ring, I was among the many hundred
thousands looking on at the tragic spectacle. I was profoundly
moved and my feelings told me that the work, even of this man,
was bound to be in vain, owing to the fatal destiny which would
inevitably lead this state to destruction. If Dr. Karl Lueger had
lived in Germany, he would have been ranked among the great
minds of our people; that he lived and worked in this impossible
state was the misfortune of his work and of himself.

When he died, the little flames in the Balkans were beginning
to leap up more greedily from month to month, and it was a
gracious fate which spared him from witnessing what he still
thought he could prevent.

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Mein Kampf

Out of the failure of the one movement and the miscarriage of
the other, I for my part sought to find the causes, and came to the
certain conviction that, quite aside from the impossibility of
bolstering up the state in old Austria, the errors of the two parties
were as follows:

The Pan-German movement was right in its theoretical view
about the aim of a German renascence, but unfortunate in its
choice of methods. It was nationalistic, but unhappily not social-
istic enough to win the masses. But its anti-Semitism was based
on a correct understanding of the importance of the racial pro-
blem, and not on religious ideas. Its struggle against a definite
denomination, however, was actually and tactically false.

The Christian Social movement had an unclear conception of
the aim of a German reawakening, but had intelligence and luck
in seeking its methods as a party. It understood the importance
of the social question, erred in its struggle against the Jews, and
had no notion of the power of the national idea.

If, in addition to its enlightened knowledge of the broad masses,
the Christian Social Party had had a correct idea of the impor-
tance of the racial question, such as the Pan-German movement
had achieved; and if, finally, it had itself been nationalistic, or if
the Pan-German movement, in addition to its correct knowledge
of the aim of the Jewish question, had adopted the practical
shrewdness of the Christian Social Party, especially in its attitude
toward socialism, there would have resulted a movement which
even then in my opinion might have successfully intervened in
German destiny.

If this did not come about, it was overwhelmingly due to the
nature of the Austrian state.

Since I saw my conviction realized in no other party, I could in
the period that followed not make up my mind to enter, let alone
fight with, any of the existing organizations. Even then I re-
garded all political movements as unsuccessful and unable to
carry out a national reawakening of the German people on a
larger and not purely external scale.

But in this period my inner revidsion toward the Habsburg
state steadily grew.

Growing Aversion to the Habsburg State 123

The more particularly I concerned myself with questions of
foreign policy, the more my conviction rose and took root that
this political formation could result in nothing but the misfortune
of Germanism. More and more clearly I saw at last that the fate
of the German nation would no longer be decided here, but in the
Reich itself. This was true, not only of political questions, but no
less for all manifestations of cultural life in general.

Also in the field of cultural or artistic affairs, the Austrian state
showed all symptoms of degeneration, or at least of unimportance
for the German nation. This was most true in the field of archi-
tecture. The new architecture could achieve no special successes
in Austria, if for no other reason because since the completion of
the Ring its tasks, in Vienna at least, had become insignificant in
comparison with the plans arising in Germany.

Thus more and more I began to lead a double life; reason and
reality told me to complete a school as bitter as it was beneficial
in Austria, but my heart dwelt elsewhere.

An oppressive discontent had seized possession of me, the more
I recognized the inner hollowness of this state and the impossibil-
ity of saving it, and felt that in all things it could be nothing but
the misfortune of the German people.

I was convinced that this state inevitably oppressed and handi^
capped any really great German as, conversely, it would help
every un-German figure.

I was repelled by the conglomeration of races which the capital
showed me, repelled by this whole mixture of Czechs, Poles,
Hungarians, Ruthenians, Serbs, and Croats, and everywhere, the
eternal mushroom of humanity — Jews and more Jews.

To me the giant city seemed the embodiment of racial desecra-
tion.

The German of my youth was the dialect of Lower Bavaria; I
could neither forget it nor learn the Viennese jargon. The longer
I lived in this city, the more my hatred grew for the foreign mix-
ture of peoples which had begun to corrode this old site of German
culture.

The idea that this state could be maintained much longer
seemed to me positively ridiculous.

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Mein Kampf

Austria was then like an old mosaic; the cement, binding the
various little stones together, had grown old and begun to
crumble; as long as the work of art is not touched, it can continue
to give a show of existence, but as soon as it receives a blow, it
breaks into a thousand fragments. The question was only when
the blow would come.

Since my heart had never beaten for an Austrian monarchy,
but only for a German Reich, the hour of this state’s downfall
could only seem to me the beginning of the redemption of the
German nation.

For all these reasons a longing rose stronger and stronger in me,
to go at last whither since my childhood secret desires and secret
love had drawn me.

I hoped some day to make a name for myself as an architect and
thus, on the large or small scale which Fate would allot me, to
dedicate my sincere services to the nation.

But finally I wanted to enjoy the happiness of living and work-
ing in the place which some day would inevitably bring about the
fulfillment of my most ardent and heartfelt wish: the union of my
beloved homeland with the common fatherland, the German
Reich.

Even today many would be unable to comprehend the great-
ness of such a longing, but I address myself to those to whom
Fate has either hitherto denied this, or from whom in harsh
cruelty it has taken it away; I address myself to all those who,
detached from their mother coimtry, have to fight even for the
holy treasure of their language, who are persecuted and tortured
for their loyalty to the fatherland, and who now, with poignant
emotion, long for the hour which will permit them to return to
the heart of their faithful mother; I address myself to all these,
and I know that they will understand me!

Only he who has felt in his own skin what it means to be a
German, deprived of the right to belong to his cherished father-
land, can measure the deep longing which bums at all times in the
hearts of children separated from their mother country. It tor-
ments those whom it fills and denies them contentment and hap-

The School of My Life

125

piness until the gates of their father’s house open, and in the
common Reich, common blood gains peace and tranquillity.

Yet Vienna was and remained for me the hardest, though most
thorough, school of my life. I had set foot in this town while still
half a boy and I left it a man, grown quiet and grave. In it I ob-
tained the foundations for a philosophy in general and a political
view in particular which later I only needed to supplement in de-
tail, but which never left me. But not until today have I been
able to estimate at their full value those years of study.

That is why I have dealt with this period at some length, be-
cause it gave me my first visual instruction in precisely those
questions which belonged to the foundations of a party which,
arising from smallest beginnings, after scarcely five years is be-
ginning to develop into a great mass movement. I do not know
what my attitude toward the Jews, Social Democracy, or rather
Marxism as a whole, the social question, etc., would be today if at
such an early time the pressure of destiny — and my own study
— had not built up a basic stock of personal opinions within me.

For if the misery of the fatherland can stimulate thousands
and thousands of men to thought on the inner reasons for this
collapse, this can never lead to that thoroughness and deep in-
sight which are disclosed to the man who has himself masteied
Fate only after years of struggle.

CHAPTER

IV

Munich

In the SPUING of 1912 I came at last to

Munich.

The city itself was as familiar to me as if I had lived for years
within its walls. This is accounted for by my study which at
every step had led me to this metropolis of German art. Not only
has one not seen Germany if one does not know Munich — no,
above all, one does not know German art if one has not seen
Munich.

In any case, this period before the War was the happiest and by
far the most contented of my life. Even if my earnings were still
extremely meager, I did not live to be able to paint, but painted
only to be able to secure my livelihood or rather to enable myself
to go on studying. I possessed the conviction that I should some
day, in spite of all obstacles, achieve the goal I had set myself.
And this alone enabled me to bear aU other petty cares of daily
existence lightly and without anxiety.

In addition to this, there was the heartfelt love which seized
me for this city more than for any other place that I knew, almost
from the first hour of my sojourn there. A German city! What a
difference from Vienna! I grew sick to my stomach when I even
thought back on this Babylon of races. In addition, the dialect,
much closer to me, which particularly in my contacts with Lower
Bavarians, reminded me of my former childhood. There were a
thousand and more things which were or became inwardly dear

Germany’s Unsound Alliance Policy

127

and precious to me. But most of all I was attracted by this won-
derful marriage of primordial power and fine artistic mood, this
single line from the Hofbrauhaus to the Odeon,* from the October
Festival to the Pinakothek,® etc. If today I am more attached to
this city than to any other spot of earth in this world, it is partly
due to the fact that it is and remains inseparably bound up with
the development of my ovm fife; if even then I achieved the hap-
piness of a truly inward contentment, it can be attributed only to
the magic which the miraculous residence of the Wittelsbachs
exerts on every man who is blessed, not only with a calculating
mind but with a feeling soul.

What attracted me most aside from my professional work was,
here again, the study of the political events of the day, among
them particularly the occurrences in the field of foreign affairs. I
came to these latter indirectly through the German alliance policy
which from my Austrian days I considered absolutely mistaken.
However, the full extent of this self-deception on the part of the
Reich had not been clear to me in Vienna. In those days I was
inclined to assume — or perhaps I merely talked myself into it as
an excuse — that Berlin perhaps knew how w'eak and unreliable
the ally would be in reality, yet, for more or less mysterious rea-
sons, held back this knowledge in order to bolster up an alliance
policy w'hich after all Bismarck himself had founded and the sud-
den cessation of wdiich could not be desirable, if for no other rea-
son lest the lurking foreigner be alarmed in any way, or the shop-
keeper at home be worried.

To be sure, my associations, particularly among the people
itself, soon made me see to my horror that this belief was false.
To my amazement I could not help seeing everywhere that even
in other\vise well-informed circles there was not the slightest
glimmer of knowledge concerning the nature of the Habsburg
monarchy. Particiilarly the common people were caught in the

* Odeon. Munich’s main concert hall, built by Ludwig I.

® Museum of Art in Munich. The Altere Pinakothek, completed in 1836
by Ludwig I of Bavaria, contains many of the finest works of the old masters.
The Neuere Pinakothek, built in 1846-53, was devoted to contemporary art.

128

Mein Kampf

maH idea that the ally could be regarded as a serious power which
in the hour of need would surely rise to the situation. Among the
masses the monarchy was still regarded as a ‘ German ’ state on
which we could count. They were of the opinion that there, too,
the power could be measured by the millions as in Germany itself,
and completely forgot that, in the first place: Austria had long
ceased to be a German state; and in the second place: the internal
conditions of this Empire were from hour to hour moving closer
to disintegration.

I had come to know this state formation better than the so-
called official ‘diplomats,’ who blindly, as almost always, rushed
headlong toward catastrophe; for the mood of the people was
always a mere discharge of what was funneled into public opinion
from above. But the people on top made a cult of the ‘ ally,’ as if
it were the Golden Calf. They hoped to replace by cordiality
what was lacking in honesty. And words were always taken for
coin of the realm.

Even in Vienna I had been seized with anger when I reflected
on the disparity appearing from time to time between the speeches
of the oflicial statesmen and the content of the Viennese press.
And yet Vienna, in appearance at least, was still a German city.
How different it was if you left Vienna, or rather German-Austria,
and went to the Slavic provinces of the Empire! You had only to
take up the Prague newspapers to find out what they thought of
the whole exalted hocus-pocus of the Triple Alliance. There
there was nothing but bitter scorn and mockery for this ‘master-
piece of statecraft.’ In the midst of peace, with both emperors
pressing kisses of friendship on each other’s foreheads, the Czechs
made no secret of the fact that this alliance would be done for on
the day when an attempt should be made to translate it from the
moonbeams of the Nibelungen ideal into practical reality.

What excitement seized these same people several years later
when the time finally came for the alliances to show their worth
and Italy leapt out of the triple pact, leaving her two comrades in
the lurch, and in the end even becoming their enemy! That any-
one even for a moment should have dared to believe in the possi-

Germany’s Unsound Alliance Policy

129

bility of such a miracle — to wit, the miracle Lliat Italy would
fight side by side with Austria — could be nothing but incom-
prehensible to anyone who was not stricken with diplomatic
blindness. But in Austria things were not a hair’s-breadth
different.

In Austria the only exponents of the alliance idea were the
Habsburgs and the Germans. The Habsburgs, out of calculation
and compulsion; the Germans, from good faith and political —
stupidity. From good faith, for they thought that by the Triple
Alliance they were performing a great service for the German
Reich itself, helping to strengthen and secure it; from political
stupidity, because neither did the first-mentioned occur, but on
the contrary, they thereby helped to chain the Reich to the corpse
of a state which would inevitably drag them both into the abyss,
and above all because they themselves, solely by virtue of this
alliance, fell more and more a prey to de-Germanization. For by
the alliance with the Reich, the Habsburgs thought they could be
secure against any interference from this side, which unfortu-
nately was the case, and thus they were able far more easily and
safely to carry through their internal policy of slowly eliminating
Germanism. Not only that in view of our well-known ‘ objectiv-
ity ’ they had no need to fear any intervention on the part of the
Reich government, but, by pointing to the alliance, they could
also silence any embarrassing voice among the Austrian-Germans
which might rise in German quarters against Slavization of an
excessively disgraceful character.

For what was the German in Austria to do if the Germans of
the Reich recognized and expressed confidence in the Habsburg
government? Should he offer resistance and be branded by the
entire German public as a traitor to his own nationality? When
for decades he had been making the most enormous sacrifices
precisely for his nationality!

But what value did this alliance have, once Germanism had
been exterminated in the Habsburg monarchy? Wasn’t the value
of the Triple Alliance for Germany positively dependent on the
preservation of German predominance in Austria? Or did they

130

Mein Kampe

really believe that they could live in an alliance with a Slavic-
Habsburg Empire?

The attitude of official German diplomacy and of all public
opinion toward the internal Austrian problem of nationalities
was beyond stupidity, it was positively insane! They banked on
an alliance, made the future and security of a people of seventy
millions dependent on it — and looked on while the sole basis for
this alliance was from year to year, inexorably and by plan, being
destroyed in the partner-nation. The day was bound to come
when a ‘treaty’ with Viennese diplomacy would remain, but the
aid of an allied empire would be lost.

With Italy this was the case from the very beginning.

If people in Germany had only studied history a little more
clearly, and gone into the psychology of nations, they would not
have been able to suppose even for an hour that the Quirinal and
the Vienna Hofburg would ever stand together in a common
fighting front. Sooner would Italy have turned into a volcano
than a government have dared to send even a single Italian to the
battlefield for the fanatically hated Habsburg state, except as an
enemy. More than once in Vienna I saw outbursts of the passion-
ate contempt and bottomless hatred with which the Italian was
‘devoted’ to the Austrian state. The sins of the House of Habs-
burg against Italian freedom and independence in the course of
the centuries was too great to be forgotten, even if the will to for-
get them had been present. And it was not present; neither in
the people nor in the Italian government. For Italy there were
therefore two possibilities for relations with Austria: either
alliance or war.

By choosing the first, the Italians were able to prepare, rmdis-
turbed, for the second.

Especially since the relation of Austria to Russia had begun to
drive closer and closer to a military clash, the German allianro
policy was as senseless as it was dangerous.

This was a classic case, bearing witness to the absence of any
broad and correct line of thinking.

Why, then, was an alliance concluded? Only in order better to

The Four Roads of German Policy

131

guard the future of the Reich than, reduced to her own resources,
she would have been in a position to do. And this future of the
Reich was nothing other than the question of preserving the Ger-
man people’s possibility of existence.

Therefore the question could be formulated only as follows:

What form must the life of the German nation assume in the
tangible future, and how can this development be provided with
the necessary foundations and the required security wi thin the
framework of general European relation of forces?

A dear examination of the premises for foreign activity on the
part of German statecraft inevitably led to the following convic-
tion:

Germany has an annual increase in population of nearly nine
hundred thousand souls. The difSculty of feeding this army of
new citizens must grow greater from year to year and ultimately
end in catastrophe, unless ways and means are found to forestall
the danger of starvation and misery in time.

There were four ways of avoiding so terrible a development for
the future:

1 . F ollowing the French example, the increase of births could be
artificially restricted, thus meeting the problem of overpopulation.

Nature herself in times of great poverty or bad climatic condi-
tions, as well as poor harvest, intervenes to restrict the increase
of population of certain countries or races; this, to be sure, by a
method as wise as it is ruthless. She diminishes, not the power of
procreation as such, but the conservation of the procreated, by
exposing them to hard trials and deprivations with the result that
all those who are less strong and less healthy are forced back into
the womb of the eternal unknown. Those whom she permits to
survive the indemency of existence are a thousandfold tested,
hardened, and well adapted to procreate in turn, in order that the
process of thoroughgoing selection may begin again from the be-
ginning. By thus brutally proceeding against the individual and
iimnediately calling him back to herself as soon as he shows him-
self unequal to the storm of life, she keeps the race and spedes
strong, in fact, raises them to the highest accomplishments.

132

Mein Kampe

At the same time the diminution of number strengthens the
individual and thus in the last analysis fortifies the species.

It is different, however, when man undertakes the limitation of
his number. He is not carved of the same wood, he is ‘humane.’
He knows better than the cruel queen of wisdom. He limits not
the conservation of the individual, but procreation itself. This
seems to him, who always sees himself and never the race, more
human and more justified than the opposite way. Unfortunately,
however, the consequences are the reverse:

' While Nature, by making procreation free, yet submitting sur-
vival to a hard trial, chooses from an excess number of individuals
the best as worthy of living, thus preserving them alone and in
them conserving their species, man limits procreation, but is
hysterically concerned that once a being is bom it should be pre-
served at any price. This correction of the divine will seems to
him as wise as it is humane, and he takes delight in having once
again gotten the best of Nature and even having proved her
inadequacy. The number, to be sure, has really been limited, but
at the same time the value of the individual has diminished; this,
however, is something the dear little ape of the Almighty does not
want to see or hear about.

— For as soon as procreation as such is limited and the number of
births diminished, the natural stmggle for existence which leaves
only the strongest and healthiest alive is obviously replaced by
the obvious desire to ‘save’ even the weakest and most sickly at
any price, and this plants the seed of a future generation which
must inevitably grow more and more deplorable the longer this
mockery of Nature and her will continues.

And the end will be that such a people will some day be de-
prived of its existence on this earth; for man can defy the eternal
laws of the will to conservation for a certain time, but sooner or
later vengeance comes. A stronger race will drive out the weak,
for the vital urge in its ultimate form wlU, time and again, burst
all the absurd fetters of the so-called humanity of individuals, in
order to replace it by the humanity of Nature which destroys the
weak to give his place to the strong.

The Four Roads of German Policy

133

Therefore, anyone who wants to secure the existence of the
German people by a self-limitation of its reproduction is robbing
it of its future.

2. A second way would be one which today we, time and time
again, see proposed and recommended: internal colonization.
This is a proposal which is well meant by just as many as by most
people it is misunderstood, thus doing the greatest conceivable
damage that anyone can imagine.*

Without doubt the productivity of the soil can be increased up
to a certain limit. But only up to a certain limit, and not continu-
ously without end. For a certain time it will be possible to com-
pensate for the increase of the German people without having to
think of hunger, by increasing the productivity of our soil. But
beside this, we must face the fact that our demands on life ordi-
narily rise even more rapidly than the number of the population.
Man’s requirements with regard to food and clothing increase
from year to year, and even now, for example, stand in no relation
to the requirements of our ancestors, say a hundred years ago.
It is, therefore, insane to believe that every rise in production
provides the basis for an increase in population: no; this is true
only up to a certain degree, since at least a part of the increased
production of the soil is spent in satisfying the increased needs of
men. But even with the greatest limitation on the one hand and
the utmost industry on the other, here again a limit will one day
be reached, created by the soil itself. With the utmost toil it will
not be possible to obtain any more from it, and then, though post-
poned for a certain time, catastrophe again manifests itself. First,
there will be hunger from time to time, when there is famine, etc.
As the population increases, this will happen more and more
often, so that finally it will only be absent when rare years of great
abundance fill the granaries. But at length the time approaches
when even then it will not be possible to satisfy men’s needs, and
hunger has become the eternal companion of such a people. Then
Nature must help again and make a choice among those whom she

* ‘ . . . wffi dm dmkbar grossten Sckadm amunchten, den man sick ntir
vorzustellm vermag.’

134

Mein Kampe

has chosen for life; but again man helps himself; that is, he turns
to artificial restriction of his increase with all the above-indicated
dire consequences for race and species.

The objection may still be raised that this future will face the
whole of humanity in any case and that consequently the individ-
ual nation can naturally not avoid this fate.

At first glance this seems perfectly correct. Yet here the follow-
ing must be borne in mind:

Assuredly at a certain time the whole of humanity will be com-
pelled, in consequence of the impossibility of making the fertility
of the soil keep pace with the continuous increase in population,
to halt the increase of the human race and either let Nature again
decide or, by self-help if possible, create the necessary balance,
though, to be sure, in a more correct way than is done today. But
. then this will strike all peoples, while today only those races are
stricken with such suffering which no longer possess the force and
strength to secure for themselves the necessary territories in this
world. For as matters stand there are at the present time on this
earth immense areas of unusued soil, only waiting for the men to
till them. But it is equally true that Nature as such has not re-
served this soil for the future possession of any particular nation
or race; on the contrary, this soil exists for the people which
possesses the force to take it and the industry to cultivate it.

Nature knows no political boundaries. First, she puts living
creatures on this globe and watches the free play of forces. She
then confers the master’s right on her favorite child, the strongest
in courage and industry.

When a people limits itself to internal colonization because
other races are clinging fast to greater and greater surfaces of this
earth, it will be forged to have recourse to self-limitation at a timp
when the other peoples are still continuing to increase. Some day
this situation will arise, and the smaller the, living space at the
disposal of the people, the sooner it will happen. Since in general,
unfortunately, the best nations, or, even more correctly, the only
truly cultured races, the standard-bearers of all human progress,
all too frequently resolve in their pacifistic blindness to renounce

The Four Roads of German Policy

135

new acquisitions of soil and content themselves with ‘internal’
colonization, while the inferior races know how to secure immense
living areas in this world for themselves — this would lead to the
following final result:

The culturally superior, but less ruthless races, would in conse-
quence of their limited soil, have to limit their increase at a time
when the culturally inferior but more brutal and more natural ^
peoples, in consequence of their greater living areas, would stilh
be in a position to increase without limit. In other words: some!
day the world will thus come into possession of the culturally'
inferior but more active men.

Then, though in a perhaps very distant future, there will be but
two possibilities either the world wfill be governed according to
the ideas of our modem democracy, and then the weight of any
decision will result in favor of the numerically stronger races, or
the world will be dominated in accordance with the laws of thC'
natural order of force, and then it is the peoples of bratal will who\
will conquer, and consequently once again not the nation of self- j
restriction. , -

No one can doubt that this world will s^ane Say be exposed to
the severest struggles for the existMce of mankind. In the end,
only the urge for self-preservation can conquer. Beneath it so-
called humanity, the expression of a mixture of stupidity, cow-
ardice, and know-it-all conceit, will melt like snow in the March
sun. ]\Iankind has grovTi great in eternal struggle, and only in
eternal peace does it perish.

For us Germans the slogan of ‘inner colonization’ is cata-
strophic, if for no other reason because it automatically reinforces
us in the opinion that we have found a means which, in accord-
ance with the pacifislic tendency, allows us ‘to earn’ our right to
exist by labor in a life of sweet slumbers.** Once this doctrine were
taken seriously in our countrj^, it would mean the end of every

^ ‘brutd-mlurliclier.’ Changed in second edition to ‘naturhaft-hrutaler.’
An English rendition of this subtlety seems impossible.

® ‘ . . . das der pazifislischen Gcsimmng entsprecheitd geslaltet, in sanftem
Schlummcrlcbcn sick das Dasein “ erarbeiten'' zu komim.’

136

Mein Kampf

exertion to preserve for ourselves the place which is our due. Once
the average German became convinced that he could secure his
life and future in this way, aU attempts at an active, and hence
alone fertile, defense of German vital necessities would be doomed
to failure. In the face of such an attitude on the part of the na-
tion any really beneficial foreign policy could be regarded as
buried, and with it the future of the German people as a whole.

Taking these consequences into account, it is no accident that
it is always primarily the Jew who tries and succeeds in planting
such mortally dangerous modes of thought in our people. He
knows his customers too well not to realize that they gratefully
let themselves be swindled by any gold-brick salesman who can
make them think he has found a way to play a little trick on Na-
ture, to make the hard, inexorable struggle for existence superflu-
ous, and instead, sometimes by work, but sometimes by plain
doing nothing, depending on how things ‘come out,’ to become
the lord of the planet.

It cannot be emphasized sharply enough that any German m-|
temal colonization must serve to eliminate social abuses particularly
to withdraw the soil from widespread speculation, but can never
suffice to secure the future of the nation without the acquisition ofnew\
soil. // ~

If we do not do this, we shall in a short time have arrived, not
only at the end of our soil, but also at the end of our strength.

Finally, the following must be stated:

The limitation to a definite small area of soil, inherent in in-
ternal colonization, like the same final effect obtained by restric-
tion of procreation, leads to an exceedingly unfavorable politico-
military situation in the nation in question.

The size of the area inhabited by a people constitutes in itself
an essential factor for determining its outward security. The
greater the quantity of space at the disposal of a people, the
greater its natural protection; for military decisions against peo-
ples living in a small restricted area have always been obtained
more quickly and hence more easily, and in particular more effec-
tively and completely, than can, conversely, be possible against

The Four Roads of German Policy

137

territorially extensive states. In the size of a state’s territory
there always lies a certain protection against frivolous attacks,
since success can be achieved only after hard struggles, and there-
fore the risk of a rash assault will seem too great unless there are
quite exceptional grounds for it. Hence the very size of a state
offers in itself a basis for more easily preserving the freedom and
independence of a people, while, conversely, the smallness of such
a formation is a positive invitation to seizure.

Actually the two first possibilities for creating a balance be-
tween the rising population and the stationary amount of soil
were rejected in the so-called national circles of the Reich. The
reasons for this position were, to be sure, different from those
above mentioned; government circles adopted a negative attitude
toward the limitation of births out of a certain moral feeling; they
indignantly rejected internal colonization because in it they
scented an attack against large landholdings and therein the be-
ginning of a wider struggle against private property in general.
In view of the form in which particularly the latter panacea was
put forward, they may very well have been right in this assump-
tion.

On the whole, the defense against the broad masses was not
very skillful and by no means struck at the heart of the problem.

Thus there remained but two ways of securing work and bread
for the rising population.

3. Either new soil could be acquired and the superfluous mili
lions sent off each year, ihus keeping the nation on a self-sustain-
ing basis; or we could

4. Produce for foreign needs through industry and commercej

and defray the cost of living from the proceeds. I

In other words : either a territorial policy, or a colonial and coml^" ,
mercial policy.

Both ways were contemplated, examined, recommended, and
combated by different political tendencies, and the last was finally
taken.

The healthier way of the two would, to be sure, have been the
first.

138

Mein Kampf

The acquisition of new soil for the settlement of the excess
population possesses an infinite number of advantages, particu-
larly if we turn from the present to the future.

For one thing, the possibility of preserving a healthy peasant
class as a foundation for a whole nation can never be valued highly
enough. Many of our present-day sufferings are only the conse-
quence of the unhealthy relationship between rural and city
population. A solid stock of small and middle peasants has at all
times been the best defense against social ills such as we possess
today. And, moreover, this is the only solution which enables a
nation to earn its daily bread within the inner circuit of its econ-
omy. Industry and commerce recede from their unhealthy lead-
ing position and adjust themselves to the general framework of a
national economy of balanced supply and demand. Both thus
cease to be the basis of the nation’s sustenance and become a
mere instrument to that end. Since they now have only a bal-
ance ^ between domestic production and demand in aU fields, they
make the subsistence of the people as a whole more or less inde-
pendent of foreign countries, and thus help to secure the freedom
of the state and the independence of the nation, particularly in
difficult periods.

It must be said that such a territorial policy cannot be f ulfill ed
in the Cameroons, but today almost exclusively in Europe. We
must, therefore, coolly and objectively adopt the standpoint that
it can certainly not be the intention of Heaven to give one people
fifty times as much land and soil in this world as another. In this
case we must not let political boundaries obscure for us the bound-
aries of eternal justice. If this earth really has room for all to live
in, let us be given the soil we need for our livelihood.

True, they will not willingly do this. But then the law of self-
preservation goes into effect; and what is refused to amicable

* ‘Indent sie nur mehr den Ausgleich sivischen eigener Produktion und
Bedarf auf alien Gebieten haben...’ Second edition inserts ‘zur Aufgabe’
after ‘Gebieten.’ The clause now reads: ‘Since their sole task now becomes
the creation of a balance,’ etc. The first version is probably an oversight,
perhaps a printer’s error.

Acquisition of New Land

139

methods, it is up to the fist to take. If our forefathers had let
their decisions depend on the same pacifistic nonsense as our
contemporaries, we should possess only a third of our present
territory; but in that case there would scarcely be any German
people for us to worry about in Europe today. No — it is to our
natural determination to fight for our own existence that we owe
the two Ostmarks ^ of the Reich and hence that inner strength
arising from the greatness of our state and national territory
which alone has enabled us to exist up to the present.

And for another reason this would have been the correct solution ;

Today many European states are like pyramids stood on their
heads. Their European area is absurdly small in comparison to
their weight of colonies, foreign trade, etc. We may say: summit
in Europe, base in the whole world; contrasting with the Ameri-
can Union which possesses its base in its own continent and
touches the rest of the earth only with its summit. And from this
comes the immense inner strength of this state and the weakness
of most European colonial powers.

Nor is England any proof to the contrary, since in considera-
tion of the British Empire we too easily forget the Anglo-Saxon
world as such. The position of England, if only because of her
linguistic and cultural bond with the American Union, can be
compared to no other state in Europe.

For Germany, consequently, the only possibility for carrying
out a healthy territorial policy lay in the acquisition of new land
in Europe itself. Colonies cannot serve this purpose unless they
seem in large part suited for settlement by Europeans. But in the
nineteenth century such colonial territories were no longer ob-
tainable by peaceful means. Consequently, such a colonial policy
could only have been carried out by means of a hard struggle
which, however, would have been carried on to much better pur-
pose, not for territories outside of Europe, but for land on the
home continent itself.

^ The two Ostmarks are the Bavarian O., or Austria, and the German O.,
TTiPflni'ng the territories bordering on Poland. The second came into use
among nationalist circles in the late nineteenth centurv.

140

Mein Kampp

Such a decision, it is true, demands undivided devotion. It is
not permissible to approach with half measures or even with hesi-
tation a task whose execution seems possible only by the harness-
ing of the very last possible ounce of energy. This means that the
entire political leadership of the Reich should have devoted itself
to this exclusive aim; never should any step have been taken,
guided by other considerations than the recognition of this task
and its requirements. It was indispensable to see clearly that this
aim could be achieved only by struggle, and consequently to face
the contest of arms with cahn and composure.

All alliances, therefore, should have been viewed exclusively
from this standpoint and judged according to their possible utili-
zation. If land was desired in Europe, it could be obtained by
and large only at the expense of Russia, and this meant that the
new Reich must again set itself on the march along the road of the
Teutonic Knights of old, to obtain by the German sword sod for
the German plow and daily bread for the nation.

For such a policy there was but one ally in Europe: England.

With England alone was it possible, our rear protected, to be-
gin the new Germanic march. Our right to do this would have
been no less than the right of our forefathers. None of our paci-
fists refuses to eat the bread of the East, although the first plow-
share in its day bore the name of ‘sword’!

Consequently, no sacrifice should have been too great for win-
ning England’s willingness. We should have renounced colonies
and sea power, and spared English industry our competition.

Only an absolutely clear orientation could lead to such a goal:
renunciation of world trade and colonies; renunciation of a Ger-
man war fleet, concentration of all the state’s instruments of
power on the land army.

The result, to be sure, would have been a momentary limita-
tion, but a great and mighty future.

There was a time when England would have listened to reason
on this point, since she was well aware that Germany as a result
of her increased population had to seek some way out and either
find it with England in Europe or without England in the world.

The Austrian Alliance

141

And it can primarily be attributed to this realization if at the
turn of the century London itself attempted to approach Ger-
many. For the first time a thing became evident which in the last
years we have had occasion to observe in a truly terrifying fash-
ion. People were unpleasantly affected by the thought of having
to pull England’s chestnuts out of the fire; as though there ever
could be an alliance on any other basis than a mutual business
deal. And with England such a deal could very well have been
made. British diplomacy was still clever enough to realize that
no service can be expected without a return.

Just suppose that an astute German foreign policy had taken
over the r61e of Japan in 1904, and we can scarcely measure the
consequences this would have had for Germany.

There would never have been any 'World War.’

The bloodshed in the year 1904 would have saved ten times
as much in the years 1914 to 1918.

And what a position Germany would occupy in the world
today!

In that light, to be sure, the alliance with Austria was an
absurdity.

For this mummy of a state allied itself with Germany, not in
order to fight a war to its end, but for the preservation of an
eternal peace which could astutely be used for the slow but
certain extermination of Germanism in the monarchy.

This alliance was an impossibility for another reason: because
we could not expect a state to take the offensive in championing
national German interests as long as this state did not possess
the power and determination to put an end to the process of
de-Germanization on its own immediate borders. If Germany
did not possess enough national awareness and ruthless deter-
mination to snatch power over the destinies of ten million na-
tional comrades from the hands of the impossible Habsburg
state, then truly we had no right to expect that she would ever
lend her hand to such farseeing and bold plans. The attitude of
the old Reich on the Austrian question was the touchstone of its
conduct in the struggle for the destiny of the whole nation.

142

Mein Kampf

In any case we were not justified in looking on, as year after
year Germanism was increasingly repressed, since the value of
Austria’s fitness for alliance was determined exclusively by the
preservation of the German element.

This road, however, was not taken at all.

These people feared nothing so much as struggle, yet they were
fin ally forced into it at the most unfavorable hour.

They wanted to run away from destiny, and it caught up with
them. They dreamed of preserving world peace, and landed in
the World War.

And this was the most significant reason why this third way
of molding the German future was not even considered. They
knew that the acquisition of new soil was possible only in the
East, they saw the struggle that would be necessary and yet
wanted peace at any price; for the watchword of German foreign
policy had long ceased to be: preservation of the German nation
by all methods; but rather: preservation of world peace by all
means. With what success, everyone knows.

I shall return to this point in particular.

Thus there remained the fourth possibility:

Industry and world trade, sea power and colonies.

Such a development, to be sure, was at first easier and also
more quickly attainable. The settlement of land is a slow process,
often lasting centuries; in fact, its inner strength is to be sought
precisely in the fact that it is not a sudden blaze, but a gradual
yet solid and continuous growth, contrasting with an industrial
development which can be blown up in the course of a few years,
but in that case is more like a soapbubble than solid strength.
A fleet, to be sure, can be built more quickly than farms can be
established in stubborn struggle and settled with peasants, but
it is also more rapidly destroyed than the latter.

If, nevertheless, Germany took this road, she should at least
have clearly recognized that this development would some day
likewise end in struggle. Only children could have thought that
they could get their bananas in the ‘peaceful contest of nations,’
by friendly and moral conduct and constant emphasis on their

With Russia Against England

143

peaceful intentions, as they so high-soundingly and unctuously
babbled; in other words, without ever having to take up arms.
No: if we chose this road, England would some day inevitably
become our enemy. It was more than senseless — but quite in
keeping with our own innocence — to wax indignant over the
fact that England should one day take the liberty to oppose our
peaceful activity with the brutality of a violent egoist.

It is true that we, I am sorry to say, would never have done
such a thing.

If a European territorial policy was only possible against
Russia in alliance with England, conversely, a policy of colonies
and world trade was conceivable only against England and with
Russia. But then we had dauntlessly to draw the consequences —
and, above aU, abandon Austria in aU haste.

Viewed from all angles, this alliance with Austria was real
madness by the turn of the century.

But we did not think of concluding an alliance with Russia
against England, any more than with England against Russia,
for in both cases the end would have been war, and to prevent
this we decided in favor of a policy of commerce and industry.
In the ‘peaceful economic’ conquest of the world we possessed a
recipe which was expected to break the neck of the former policy
of violence once and for all ^ Occasionally, perhaps, we were not
quite sure of ourselves, particularly when from time to lime in-
comprehensible threats came over from England; therefore, we
decided to build a fleet, though not to attack and destroy Eng-
land, but for the ‘defense’ of our old friend ‘world peace’ and
‘peaceful’ conquest of the world. Consequently, it was kept on a
somewhat more modest scale in all respects, not only in number
but also in the tonnage of the individual ships as well as in arma-
ment, so as in the fimal analysis to let our ‘peaceful’ intentions
shine through after aU.

The talk about the ‘peaceful economic’ conquest of the world
was possibly the greatest nonsense which has ever been exalted
to be a guiding principle of state policy. What made this non-

‘ ‘die der bisherigen Gewaltpolilik ein jwr allemal das Gentck brechen sollte.’

144

Mein Kampe

sense even worse was that its proponents did not hesitate to call
upon England as a crown witness for the possibility of such an
achievement. The crimes of our academic doctrine and concep-
tion of history in this connection can scarcely be made good and
are only a striking proof of how many people there are who
‘learn’ history without understanding or even comprehending it.
England, in particular, should have been recognized as the strik-
ing refutation of this theory, for no people has ever with greater
brutality better prepared its economic conquests with the sword,
and later ruthlessly defended them,^ than the English nation.
Is it not positively the distinguishing feature of British states-
manship to draw economic acquisitions from political strength,
and at once to recast every gain in economic strength into po-
litical power? And what an error to believe that England is
personally too much of a coward to stake her own blood for her
economic policy! The fact that the English people possessed no
‘people’s army’ in no way proved the contrary; for what matters
is not the momentary military form of the fighting forces, but
rather the will and determination to risk those which do exist.
England has always possessed whatever armament she happened
to need. She always fought with the weapons which success
demanded. She fought with mercenaries as long as mercenaries
sufficed; but she reached down into the precious blood of the
whole nation when only such a sacrifice could bring victory;
but the determination for victory, the tenacity and ruthless
pursuit of this struggle, remained unchanged.

In Germany, however, the school, the press, and comic maga-
zines cultivated a conception of the Englishman’s character, and
almost more so of his empire, which inevitably led to one of the
most insidious delusions; for gradually everyone was infected
by this nonsense, and the consequence was an underestimation
for which we would have to pay most bitterly. This falsification
went so deep that people became convinced that in the English-
man they faced a business man as shrewd as personally he was

* 'hat dock kein Volk mit grosserer Brutalitat seine wirlschafllichen Erobe-
ruwen besser vorbereitet und spiUer riicksichtslos verleidigt . . .’

Inner Weakness of the Triple Alliance

145

unbelievably cowardly. The fact that a world empire the size
of the British could not be put together by mere subterfuge and
swindling was unfortunately something that never even occurred
to our exalted professors of academic science. The few who
raised a voice of warning were ignored or killed by silence. I
remember well my comrades’ looks of astonishment when we
faced the Tommies in person in Flanders. After the very first
days of battle the conviction dawned on each and every one of
them that these Scotsmen did not exactly jibe with the pictures
they had seen fit to give us in the comic magazines and press
dispatches.

It was then that I began my first reflections about the import-
ance of the form of propaganda.

This falsification, however, did have one good side for those who
spread it; by this example, even though it was incorrect, they
were able to demonstrate the correctness of the economic con-
quest of the world. If the Englishman had succeeded, we too
were bound to succeed, and our definitely greater honesty, the
absence in us of that specifically English ‘perfidy,’ was regarded
as a very special plus. For it was hoped that this would enable
us to win the affection, particularly of the smaller nations, and
the confidence of the large ones the more easily.

It did not occur to us that our honesty was a profound horror
to the others, if for no other reason because we ourselves be-
lieved all these things seriously while the rest of the world re-
garded such behavior as the expression of a special slyness and
disingenuousness, until, to their great, infinite amazement, the
revolution gave them a deeper insight into the boundless stu-
pidity of our honest convictions.

However, the absurdity of this ‘economic conquest’ at once
made the absurdity of the Triple Alliance clear and comprehensi
ble. For with what other state could we ally ourselves? In
alliance with Austria, to be sure, we could not undertake any
military conquest, even in Europe alone. Precisely therein con-
sisted the inner weakness of the alliance from the very first day.
A Bismarck could permit himself this makeshift, but not by a

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Mein Kampf

long shot every bungling successor, least of all at a time when
certain essential premises of Bismarck’s alliance had long ceased
to exist; for Bismarck still believed that in Austria he had to do
with a German state. But with the gradual introduction of uni-
versal suffrage, this country had sunk to the status of an un-
German hodgepodge with a parliamentary government.

Also from the standpoint of racial policy, the alliance with
Austria was simply ruinous. It meant tolerating the growth of a
new Slavic power on the borders of the Reich, a power which
sooner or later would have to take an entirely different attitude
toward Germany than, for example, Russia. And from year to
year the alliance itself was bound to grow inwardly hoUower and
weaker in proportion as the sole supporters of this idea in the
monarchy lost influence and were shoved out of the most decisive
positions.

By the turn of the century the alliance with Austria had entered
the very same stage as Austria’s pact with Italy.

Here again there were only two possibilities: either we were in
a pact with the Habsburg monarchy or we had to lodge protest
against the repression of Germanism. But once a power embarks
on this kind of undertaking, it usually ends in open struggle.

Even psychologically the value of the Triple Alliance was small,
since the stability of an alliance increases in proportion as the
individual contracting parties can hope to achieve definite and
tangible expansive aims. And, conversely, it will be the weaker
the more it limits itself to the preservation of an existing condi-
tion. Here, as everywhere else, strength lies not in defense but
in attack.

Even then this was recognized in various quarters, unfortu-
nately not by the so-called ‘authorities.’ Particularly Luden-
dorff, then a colonel and oSicer in the great general staff, pointed
to these weaknesses in a memorial written in 1912. Of course,
none of the ‘statesmen’ attached any value or significance to
the matter; for clear common sense is expected to manifest it-
self expediently only in common mortals, but may on prin-
ciple remain absent where ‘diplomats’ are concerned.

Austria: a Tempting Legacy

147

For (iennany it was sheer good fortune that in 1914 the war
broke out indirectly through Austria, so that the Habsburgs
were forced to take part; for if it had happened the other way
around Germany would have been alone. Never would the
Habsburg state have been able, let alone willing, to take part
in a conflict which would have arisen through Germany. What
we later so condemned in Italy would then have happened
even earlier with Austria: they would have remained ‘neutral’
in order at least to save the state from a revolution at the very
start. Austrian Slavdom would rather have shattered the
monarchy even in 1914 than permit aid to Germany.

How great were the dangers and diSiculties entailed by the
alliance with the Danubian monarchy, only very few realized at
that time.

In the first place, Austria possessed too many enemies who
were planning to grab what they could from the rotten state to
prevent a certain hatred from arising in the course of time
against Germany, in whom they saw the cause of preventing
the generally hoped and longed-for collapse of the monarchy.
They came to the conviction that Vienna could finally be reached
only by a detour through Berlin.

In the second place, Germany thus lost her best and most
hopeful possibilities of alliance. They were replaced by an ever-
mounting tension with Russia and even Italy. For in Rome the
general mood was just as pro-German as it was anti- Austrian,
slumbering in the heart of the very last Italian and often brightly
flaring up.

Now, since we had thrown ourselves into a policy of commerce
and industry, there was no longer the slightest ground for war
against Russia either. Only the enemies of both nations could
stiU have an active interest in it. And actually these were prima-
rily the Jews and the Marxists, who, with every means, incited
and agitated for war between the two states.

Thirdly and lastly, this alliance inevitably involved an infinite
peril for Germany, because a great power actually hostile to
Bismarck’s Reich could at any time easily succeed in mobilizing

148

Mein Kamff

a whole series of states against Germany, since it was in a posi-
tion to promise each of them enrichment at the expense of our
Austrian all}'.

The whole East of Europe could be stirred up against the
Danubian monarchy — particularly Russia and Italy. Never
would the world coalition which had been forming since the
initiating efforts of King Edward have come into existence if
Austria as Germany’s aUy had not represented too tempting a
legacy. This alone made it possible to bring states with other-
wise so heterogeneous desires and aims into a single offensive
front. Each one could hope that in case of a general action
against German}' it, too, would achieve enrichment at Austria’s
expense. The danger was enormously increased by the fact that
Turke}' seemed to be a silent partner in this unfortunate alliance.

International Jewish world finance needed these lures to enable
it to cany out its long-desired plan for destro}Tng the Germany
which thus far did not submit to its widespread superstate con-
trol of finance and economics. Only in this way could they
forge a coalition made strong and courageous by the sheer num-
bers of the gigantic armies now on the march and prepared to
attack the horny ^ Siegfried at last.

The alliance ndth the Habsburg monarchy, which even in
Austria b.ad filled me with di^atisfaction, now became the source
of long inner trials which in the time to come reinforced me even
more in the opinion I had already conceived.

Even then, among those few people whom I frequented, I
made no secret of my con\nction that our catastrophic alliance
with a state on the brink of ruin would also lead to a fatal col-
lapse of Germany unless we knew enough to release ourselves
from it on time. This conviction of mine was firm as a rock, and
I did not falter in it for one moment when at last the storm of
the World War seemed to have excluded all reasonable thought
and a frenzy of enthusiasm had seized even those quarters for

1 In the legend Siegfried kills the dragon by hiding in a pit and stabbinf;
the beast as it passes over him. The dragon’s blood pours over Siegfried and
makes his skin ‘homy,’ invulnerable.

State and Economic Life

149

which there should have been only the coldest consideration of
reality. And while I myself was at the front, I put forward, when-
ever these problems were discussed, my opinion that the alliance
had to be broken ofiF, the quicker the better for the German nation,
and that the sacrifice of the Habsburg monarchy w'ould be no
sacrifice at all to make if Germany thereby could achieve a re-
striction of her adversaries; for it was not for the preservation
of a debauched dynasty that the millions had donned the steel
helmet, but for the salvation of the German nation.

On a few occasions before the War it seemed as though, in
one camp at least, a gentle doubt was arising as to the correct-
ness of the alliance policy that had been chosen. German con-
servative circles began from time to time to warn against excessive
confidence, but, like everything else that was sensible, this was
thrown to the winds. They were convinced that they were on
the path to a world ‘ conquest,’ whose success would be tremen-
dous and which would entail practically no sacrifices.

There was nothing for those not in authority to do but to
watch in silence why and how the ‘authorities’ marched straight
to destruction, drawing the dear people behind them like the
Pied Piper of Hamelin.

% * *

The deeper cause that made it possible to represent the
absurdity of an ‘economic conquest’ as a practical political
method, and the preservation of ‘world peace’ as a political
goal for a whole people, and even to make these things intelli-
gible, lay in the general sickening of our whole political thinking.

With the victorious march of German technology and industry,
the rising successes of German commerce, the realization was
increasingly lost that all this was only possible on the basis of a
strong state. On the contrary, many circles went so far as to put
forward the conviction that the state owed its very existence to
these phenomena, that the state itself orimarily represented an

150

Mein Kampf

economic institution, that it could be governed according to
economic requirements, and that its very existence depended on
economics, a state of affairs which was regarded and glorified as
by far the healthiest and most natural.

But the state has nothing at all to do with any definite eco-
nomic conception or development.

It is not a collection of economic contracting parties in a
definite delimited living space for the fulfillment of economic
tasks, but the organization of a community of physically and
psychologically similar living beings for the better facilitation of
the maintenance of their species and the achievement of the aim
which has been allotted to this species by ProAudence. This and
nothing else is the aim and meaning of a state. Economics is
only one of the many instruments required for the achievement of
this aim. It is never the cause or the aim of a state unless this
state is based on a false, because unnatural, foundation to begin
with. Only in this way can it be explained that the state as such
does not necessarily presuppose territorial limitation. This will
be necessary only among the peoples who want to secure the
maintenance of their national comrades by their own resources;
in other words, are prepared to fight the struggle for existence
by their own labor. Peoples who can sneak their way into the
rest of mankind like drones, to make other men work for them
under all sorts of pretexts, can form states even without any
definitely delimited living space of their own. This applies first
and foremost to a people under whose parasitism the whole of
honest humanity is suffering, today more than ever: the Jews.

The Jewish state was never spatially limited in itself, but uni-
versally unlimited as to space, though restricted in the sense of
embracing but one race. Consequently, this people has always
formed a state within states. It is one of the most ingenious
tricks that was ever de\'ised, to make this state sail under the
flag of ‘religion,’ thus assuring it of the tolerance which the
Aryan is always ready to accord a religious creed. For actually
the Mosaic religion is nothing other than a doctrine for the
preservation of the Jewish race. It therefore embraces almost all

State and Economic Life

151

sociological, political, and economic fields of knowledge which
can have any bearing on this function.

The urge to preserve the species is the first cause for the for-
mation of human communities; thus the state is a national
organism and not an economic organization. A difference which
is just as large as it is incomprehensible, particularly to our
so-called ‘ statesmen ’ of today. That is why they think they can
build up the state through economics while in reality it results
and always will result solely from the action of those qualities
which lie in line with the will to preserve the species and race.
And these are always heroic virtues and never the egoism of
shopkeepers, since the preservation of the existence of a species
presupposes a spirit of sacrifice in the individual. The sense of
the poet’s words, ‘If you will not stake your life, you will win no
life,’ is that the sacrifice of personal existence is necessary to
secure the preservation of the species. Thus, the most sensible
prerequisite for the formation and preservation of a state is the
presence of a certain feeling of cohesion based on similarity of
nature and species, and a willingness to stake everything on it
with all possible means, something which in peoples with soil
of their own will create heroic virtues, but in parasites will create
lying hypocrisy and malignant cruelty, or else these qualities
must already be present as the necessary and demonstrable
basis for their existence as a state so different in form. The
formation of a state, originally at least, will occur through the
exercise of these qualities, and in the subsequent struggle for
self-preservation those nations will be defeated — that is, will
faU a prey to subjugation and thus sooner or later die out —
which in the mutual struggle possess the smallest share of heroic
virtues, or are not equal to the lies and trickery of the hostile
parasite. But in this case, too, this must almost always be
attributed less to a lack of astuteness than to a lack of deter-
mination and courage, which only tries to conceal itself beneath
a cloak of humane convictions.

How little the state-forming and state-preserving qualities are
connected with economics is most clearly shown by the fact that

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Mein Kampf

the inner strength of a state only in the rarest cases coincides
with so-called economic prosperity, but that the latter, in in-
numerable cases, seems to indicate the state’s approaching
decline. If the formation of human societies were primarily
attributable to economic forces or even impulses, the highest
economic development would have to mean the greatest strength
of the state and not the opposite.

Belief in the state-forming and state-preserving power of eco-
nomics seems especially incomprehensible when it obtains in a
country which in all things clearly and penetratingly shows the
historic reverse. Prussia, in particular, demonstrates with mar-
velous sharpness that not material qualities but ideal virtues
alone make possible the formation of a state. Only under their
protection can economic life flourish, until with the collapse of
the pure state-forming faculties the economy collapses too; a
process which we can observe in so terrible and tragic a form
right now. The material interests of man can always thrive
best as long as they remain in the shadow of heroic virtues; but
as soon as they attempt to enter the primary sphere of existence,
they destroy the basis for their own existence.

Always when in Germany there was an upsurge of political
power, the economic conditions began to improve; but always
when economics became the sole content of our people’s life,
stifling the ideal virtues, the state collapsed and in a short time
drew economic life along with it.

If, however, we consider the question, what, in reality, are
the state-forming or even state-preserving forces, we can sum
them up under one single head; the ability and will of the indi-
vidual to sacrifice himself for the totality. That these virtues
have nothing at all to do with economics can be seen from the
simple realization that man never sacrifices himself for the latter,
or, in other words: a man does not die for business, but only for
ideals. Nothing proved the Englishman’s superior psychological
knowledge of the popular soul better than the motivation which
he gave to his struggle. While we fought for bread, England
fought for ‘freedom’; and not even for her own, no, for that of

State and Economic Life

153

the small nations. In our country we laughed at this effrontery,
or were enraged at it, and thus only demonstrated how empty-
headed and stupid the so-called statesmen of Germany had be-
come even before the War. We no longer had the slightest idea
concerning the essence of the force which can lead men to their
death of their own free will and decision.

In 1914, as long as the German people thought they were
fighting for ideals, they stood firm; but as soon as they were told
to fight for their daily bread, they preferred to give up the game.

And our brilliant ‘statesmen’ were astonished at this change
in attitude. It never became clear to them that from the moment
when a man begins to fight for an economic interest, he avoids
death as much as possible, since death would forever deprive
him of his reward for fighting. Anxiety for the rescue of her
own child makes a heroine of even the feeblest mother, and only
the struggle for the preservation of the species and the hearth,
or the state that protects it, has at all times driven men against
the spears of their enemies.

The following theorem may be established as an eternally
valid truth:

Never yet has a state been founded by peaceful economic
means, but always and exclusively by the instincts of preserva-
tion of the species regardless whether these are found in the
province of heroic virtue or of cunning craftiness; the one results
in Aryan states based on work and culture, the other in Jewish
colonies of parasites. As soon as economics as such begins to
choke out these instincts in a people or in a state, it becomes
the seductive cause of subjugation and oppression.

The belief of pre-war days that the world could be peacefully
opened up to, let alone conquered for, the German people by a
commercial and colonial policy was a classic sign of the loss of
real state-forming and state-preserving virtues and of all the
insight, will power, and active determination which follow from v
them; the penalty for this, inevitable as the law of nature, was
the World War with its consequences.

For those who do not look more deeply into the matter, this

154

Mein Kampe

attitude of the German nation — for it was really as good as
general — could only represent an insoluble riddle: for was not
Germany above aU other countries a marvelous example of an
empire which had risen from foundations of pure political power?
Prussia, the germ-ceU of the Empire, came into being through
resplendent heroism and not through financial operations or
commercial deals, and the Reich itself in turn was only the
glorious reward of aggressive political leadership and the death-
defying courage of its soldiers. How could this very German
people have succumbed to such a sickening of its political instinct?
For here we face, not an isolated phenomenon, but forces of
decay which in truly terrif 3 'ing number soon began to flare up
like will-o’-the-wisps, brushing up and down the body politic,
or eating like poisonous abscesses into the nation, now here and
now there. It seemed as though a continuous stream of poison
was being driven into the outermost blood-vessels of this once
heroic body by a mysterious power, and was inducing progres-
sively greater paralysis of sound reason and the simple instinct of
self-preservation.

As innumerable times I passed in review aU these questions,
arising through my position on the German alliance policy and
the economic policy of the Reich in the years 1912 to 1914 — the
only remaining solution to the riddle became to an ever-increas-
ing degree that power which, from an entirely different viewpoint,
I had come to know earlier in Vienna: the Marxist doctrine and
philosophy, and their organizational results.

For the second time I dug into this doctrine of destruction —
this time no longer led by the impressions and effects of my daily
associations, but directed by the observation of general processes
of political life. I again immersed myself in the theoretical lit-
erature of this new. world, attempting to achieve clarity concern-
ing its possible effects, and then compared it with the actual
phenomena and events it brings about in political, cultural, and
economic life.

Now for the first time I turned my attention to the attempts
to master this world plague.

Gt:kMANy’s Attitude Toward Maexism ISS

I studied Bismarck’s Socialist legislation^ in its intention,
struggle, and success. Gradually I obtained a positively granite
foundation for my own conAuction, so that since that time I have
never been forced to undertake a shift in my own inner view on
this question. Likewise the relation of Marxism to the Jews was
submitted to further thorough examination.

Though previously in Vienna, Germany above aU had seemed
to me an unshakable colossus, now anxious misgivings sometimes
entered my mind. In silent solitude and in the small circles of
my acquaintance, I was filled with wrath at German foreign
policy and likewise with what seemed to me the incredibly frivo-
lous way in which the most important problem then existing for
Germany, Marxism, was treated. It was really beyond me how
people could rush so blindly into a danger whose effects, pursuant
to the ^Marxists’ own intention, were bound some day to be
monstrous. Even then, among my acquaintance, just as today
on a large scale, I warned against the phrase with which all
wretched cowards comfort themselves: ‘Nothing can happen to
us!’ This pestilential attitude had once been the downfall of a
gigantic empire. Could anyone believe that Germany alone was
not subject to exactly the same laws as all other human organ-
isms?

In the years 1913 and 1914, I, for the first time in various
circles which today in part faithfully support the National
Socialist movement, expressed the conviction that the question
of the future of the German nation was the question of destroy-
ing Marxism.

In the catastrophic German alliance policy I saw only one of
the consequences called forth by the disruptive work of this
doctrine; for the terrible part of it was that this poison almost
invisibly destroyed all the foundations of a. healthy conception

1 Bismarck’s Anti-Socialist Law, put through the Reichstag on October
18, 1878, prohibited meetings, collections of funds, and publications of
Social Democrats, Socialists, and Communists; it remained in force until
1890 when the new Emperor, William II, opposed it. Despite the law.
Socialist deputies in the Reichstag retained their parliamentary immunity.

156

Mein Kampe

of economy and state, and that often those affected by it did not
themselves realize to what an extent their activities and desires
emanated from this philosophy which they otherwise sharply
rejected.

The internal decline of the German nation had long since
begun, yet, as so often in life, people had not achieved clarity
concerning the force that was destro3dng their existence. Some-
times they tinkered around with the disease, but confused the
forms of the phenomenon with the virus that had caused it.
Since they did not know or want to know the cause, the struggle
against Marxism was no better than bungling quackery.

CHAPTER

V

The World War

.^\.s A YOUNG SCAMP in my wild years,
nothing had so grieved me as having been bom at a time which
obviously erected its Halls of Fame only to shopkeepers and
government ofi&cials. The waves of historic events seemed to
have grown so smooth that the future really seemed to belong
only to the ‘peaceful contest of nations’; in other words, a cozy
mutual swindling match with the exclusion of violent methods of
defense. The various nations began to be more and more like
private citizens who cut the ground from under one another’s feet,
stealing each other’s customers and orders, trying in every way
to get ahead of one another, and staging this whole act amid a
hue and cry as loud as it is harmless. This development seemed
not only to endure but was expected in time (as was universally
recommended) to remodel the whole world into one big depart-
ment store in whose vestibules the busts of the shrewdest profi-
teers and the most lamblike administrative officials would be
garnered for aU eternity. The English could supply the mer-
chants, the Germans the administrative officials, and the Jews
no doubt would have to sacrifice themselves to being the owners,
since by their own admission they never make any money, but
alwa3rs ‘pay,’ and, besides, speak the most languages.

Why couldn’t I have been bom a hundred years earlier? Say
at the time of the Wars of Liberation when a man, even without
a ‘business,’ was really worth something?!

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Mein Kampe

Thus I had often indulged in angry thoughts concerning my
earthly pilgrimage, which, as it seemed to me, had begun too
late, and regarded the period ‘of law and order’ ahead of me
as a mean and undeserved trick of Fate. Even as a boy I was no
‘pacifist,’ and all attempts to educate me in this direction came
to nothing.

The Boer War was like summer lightning to me.

Every day I waited impatiently for the newspapers and
devoured dispatches and news reports, happy at the privilege
of witnessing this heroic struggle even at a distance.

The Russo-Japanese War found me considerably more mature,
but sign more attentive. More for national reasons I had al-
ready taken sides, and in our little discussions at once sided with
the Japanese. In a defeat of the Russians I saw the defeat of
Austrian Slavdom.

Since then many years have passed, and what as a boy had
seemed to me a lingering disease, I now felt to be the quiet before
the storm. As early as my Vienna period, the Balkans were im-
mersed in that livid sultriness w'hich customarily announces the
hurricane, and from time to time a beam of brighter light flared
up, only to vanish again in the spectral darkness. But then came
the Balkan War and with it the first gust of wind swept across
a Europe grown nervous. The time which now followed lay on
the chests of men like a heavy nightmare, sultry as feverish
tropic heat, so that due to constant anxiety the sense of ap-
proaching catastrophe turned at last to longing: let Heaven at
last give free rein to the fate which could no longer be thwarted.
And then the first mighty lightning flash struck the earth; the
storm was unleashed and with the thunder of Heaven there
mingled the roar of the World War batteries.

When the news of the murder of Archduke Francis Ferdinand
arrived in Munich (I happened to be sitting at home and heard
of it only vaguely), I was at first seized with worry that the bullets
may have been shot from the pistols of German students, who,
out of indignation at the heir apparent’s continuous work of
Slavization, wanted to free the German people from this internal

Greatest Friend of the Slavs Murdered 159

enemy. What the consequence of this would have been was
easy to imagine: a new wave of persecutions which would now
have been “justified’ and ‘explained’ in the eyes of the whole
world. But when, soon afterward, I heard the names of the
supposed assassins, and moreover read that they had been iden-
tified as Serbs, a light shudder began to rim through me at thip
vengeance of inscrutable Destiny.

The greatest friend of the Slavs had fallen beneath the buUets
of Slavic fanatics.

Anyone with con.stant occasion in the last years to observe
the relation of Austria to Serbia could not for a moment be in
doubt that a stone had been set rolling whose course could no
longer be arrested.

Those who today shower the Viennese government with re-
proaches on the form and content of the ultimatum it issued, do
it an injustice. No other power in the world could have acted
differently in the same situation and the same position. At her
southeastern border Austria possessed an inexorable and mortal
enemy who at shorter and shorter intervals kept challenging the
monarchy and would never have left off until the moment favor-
able for the shattering of the Empire had arrived. There was
reason to fear that this would occur at the latest with the death
of the old Emperor; by then perhaps the old monarchy would no
longer be in a position to offer any serious resistance. In the
last few years the state had been so bound up with the person
of Francis Joseph that the death of this old embodiment of
the Empire was felt by the broad masses to be tantamount to
the death of the Empire itself. Indeed, it was one of the craftiest
artifices, particularly of the Slavic policy, to create the appear-
ance that the Austrian state no longer owed its existence to
anything but the miraculous and unique skill of this monarch;
this flattery was all the more welcome in the Hofburg, since it
corresponded not at all to the real merits of the Emperor. The
thorn hidden in these paeans of praise remained undiscovered.
The rulers did not see, or perhaps no longer wanted to see, that
the more the monarchy depended on the outstanding statecraft.

160

Mein Kampf

as they put it, of this ‘wisest monarch’ of all times, the more
catastrophic the situation was bound to become if one day Fate
were to knock at his door, too, demanding its tribute.

Was old Austria even conceivable without the Emperor?!

Wouldn’t the tragedy which had once stricken Maria Theresa
have been repeated?

No, it is really doing the Vienna circles an injustice to reproach
thp m with rushing into a war which might otherwise have been
avoided. It no longer could be avoided, but at most could have
been postponed for one or two years. But this was the curse of
German as well as Austrian diplomacy, that it had always striven
to postpone the inevitable reckoning, until at length it was
forced to strike at the most unfavorable hour. We can be con-
vinced that a further attempt to save peace would have brought
war at an even more unfavorable time.

No, those who did not want this war had to have the courage
to face the consequences, which could have consisted only in the
sacrifice of Austria. Even then the war would have come,.but no
longer as a struggle of aU against ourselves, but in the form of
a partition of the Habsburg monarchy. And then they had to
make up their minds to join in, or to look on with empty hands
and let Fate run its course.

Those very people, however, who today are loudest in cursing
the beginning of the war and offer the sagest opinions were those
who contributed most fatally to steering us into it.

For decades the Social Democrats had carried on the most
scoundrelly war agitation against Russia, and the Center for
religious reasons had been most active in making the Austrian
state the hinge and pivot of Germany policy. Now we had to
suffer the consequences of this lunacy. What came had to come,
and could no longer under any circumstances be avoided. The
guilt of the German government was that in order to preserve
peace it always missed the favorable hours for striking, became
entangled in the alliance for the preservation of world peace, and
thus finally became the victun of a world coalition which count-
ered the idea of preserving world peace with nothing less than
■determination for world war.

The Austrian Ultimatum

161

If the Vienna government had given the ultimatum another,
milder form, this would have changed nothing in the situation
except at most one thing, that this government would itself have
been swept away by the indignation of the people. For in the
eyes of the broad masses the tone of the ultimatum was far too
gentle and by no means too brutal, let alone too far-reaching.
Anyone who today attempts to argue this away is either a for-
getful blockhead or a perfectly conscious swindler and liar.

The struggle of the year 1914 was not forced on the masses —
no, by the living God — it was desired by the whole people.

People wanted at length to put an end to the general uncer-
tainty. Only thus can it be -understood that more than two
mUlion German men and boys thronged to the colors for this
hardest of all struggles, prepared to defend the flag with the last
drop of their blood.

* * «

To me those hours seemed like a release from the painful feel-
ings of my youth. Even today I am not ashamed to say that,
overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees
and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me
the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time.

A fight for freedom had begun, mightier than the earth had
ever seen; for once Destiny had begun its course, the conviction
dawned on even the broad masses that this time not the fate of
Serbia or Austria was involved, but whether the German nation
was to be or not to be. //

For the last time in many years the people had a prophetic
vision of its own future. Thus, right at the beginning of the
gigantic struggle the necessary grave undertone entered into the
ecstasy of an overflowing enthusiasm; for this knowledge alone
made the national uprising more than a mere blaze of straw.
The earnestness was only too necessary; for in those days people
in general had not the faintest conception of the possible length

162

Mein Kampf

and duration of the struggle that was now beginning. They
dreamed of bang home again that mnter to continue and renew
their peaceful labors.

WTiat a man wants is what he hopes and believes. The over-
whelming majority of the nation had long been weary of the
eternally uncertain state of affairs; thus it was only too under-
standable that they no longer believed in a peaceful conclusion
of the .\ustro-Serbian conflict, but hoped for the final settlement.

I, too, was one of these millions.

Hardly had the news of the assassination become known in
JIunich than at once two thoughts quivered through my brain:
first, that at last war would be inevitable; and, furthermore,
that now the Habsburg state would be compelled to keep its
pact; for what I had always most feared was the possibility that
Germany herself would some day, perhaps in consequence of
this very alliance, find herself in a conflict not directly caused by
Austria, so that the Austrian slate for reasons of domestic policy
would not muster the force of decision to stand behind her ally.
The Slavic majority of the Empire would at once have begim
to sabotage any such intention on the part of the state, and
would always have preferred to smash the entire state to smither-
eens than grant its ally the help it demanded. This danger was
now eliminated. The old state had to fight whether it wanted
to or not.

My own position on the conflict was likewise very simple and
clear; for me it was not that Austria was fighting for some Serbian
satisfaction, but that Germany was fighting for her existence,
the German nation for life or death, freedom and future. The
time had come for Bismarck’s work to fight; what the fathers
had once won in the battles from Weissenburg to Sedan and Paris,
young Germany now had to earn once more. If the struggle were
carried through to victory, our nation would enter the circle of
great nations from the standpoint of external power, and only
then could the German Reich maintain itself as a mighty haven
of p>eace without having, for the sake of peace, to cut down on
the daily bread of her children.

Enlistment in a Bavarian Regiment

163

As a boy and young man I had so often felt the desire to prove
at least once by deeds that for me national enthusiasm was no
empty whim. It often seemed to me almost a sin to shout hurrah
perhaps without having the inner right to do so; for who had
the right to use this word without having proved it in the place
where all playing is at an end and the inexorable hand of the
Goddess of Destiny begins to weigh peoples and men according
to the truth and steadfastness of their convictions? Thus my
heart, like that of a million others, overflowed with proud joy that
at last I would be able to redeem m 3 ^elf from this paralyzing
feeling. I had so often sung ‘Deutschland iiber Aiks' and shouted
‘Heil' at the top of my lungs, that it seemed to me almost a be-
lated act of grace to be allowed to stand as a witness in the di-
vine court of the eternal judge and proclaim the sincerity of this
conviction. For from the first hour I was convinced that in case
of a war — which seemed to me inevitable — in one way or an-
other I would at once leave my books. Likewise I knew that
my place would then be where my inner voice directed me.

I had left Austria primarily for political reasons; what was
more natural than that, now the struggle had begun, I should
really begin to take account of this conviction. I did not want
to fight for the Habsburg state, but was ready at any time to
die for my people and for the Reich which embodied it.

On the third of August, I submitted a personal petition to
His Majesty, King Ludwig IH, with a request for permission
to enter a Bavarian regiment. The cabinet ofl&ce certainly had
plenty to do in those days; so much the greater was my joy to
receive an answer to my request the very next day. With trem-
bling hands I opened the document; my request had been ap-
proved and I was summoned to report to a Bavarian regiment.
My joy and gratitude knew no bounds. A few days later I was
wearing the tunic which I was not to do2 until nearly six years
later.

For me, as for every German, there now began the greatest
and most unforgettable time of my earthly existence. Compared
to the events of this gigantic struggle, every thing, past receded.

164

Mein Kampf

to shallow nothingness. Precisely in these days, with the tenth
anniversary of the mighty event approaching, I think back with
proud sadness on those first weeks of our people’s heroic struggle,
in which Fate graciously allowed me to take part.

As though it were yesterday, image after image passes before
my eyes. I see myself donning the uniform in the circle of my
dear comrades, turning out for the first time, drilling, etc., until
the day came for us to march off.

A single worry tormented me at that time, me, as so many
others: would we not reach the front too late? Time and time
again this alone banished all my calm. Thus, in every cause for
rejoicing at a new, heroic victory, a slight drop of bitterness was
hidden, for every new victory seemed to increase the danger of
our coming too late.

At last the day came when we left Munich to begin the ful-
fillment of our duty. For the first time I saw the Rhine as we
rode westward along its quiet waters to defend it, the German
stream of streams, from the greed of the old enemy. When
through the tender veil of the early morning mist the Niederwald
Monument gleamed down upon us in the gentle first rays of the
sun, the old Watch on the Rhine roared out of the endless trans-
port train into the morning sky, and I felt as though my heart
would burst.

And then came a damp, cold night in Flanders, through which
we marched in silence, and when the day began to emerge from
the mists, suddenly an iron greeting came whizzing at us over
our heads, and with a sharp report sent the little pellets flying
between our ranks, ripping up the wet ground; but even before
the little cloud had passed, from two hundred throats the first
hurrah rose to meet the first messenger of death. Then a crackling
and a roaring, a singing and a howling began, and with feverish
eyes each one of us was drawn forward, faster and faster, until
suddenly past turnip fields and hedges the fight began, the fight
of man against man. And from the distance the strains of a song
reached our ears, coming closer and closer, leaping from company
to company, and just as Death plunged a busy hand into our

From Young Volunteer to Old Soldier 165

ranks, the song reached us too and we passed it along; 'Deutsch-
land, Deutschland uber Alles, iiber Alles in der Welt!’

Four days later we came back. Even our step had changed.
Seventeen-year-old boys now looked like men.

The volunteers of the List Regiment may not have learned to
fight properly, but they knew how to die like old soldiers.

This was the beginning.

Thus it went on year after year; but the romance of battle
had been replaced by horror. The enthusiasm gradually cooled
and the exuberant joy was stifled by mortal fear. The time came
when every man had to struggle between the instinct of self-
preservation and the admonitions of duty. I, too, was not spared
by this struggle. Always when Death was on the hunt, a vague
something tried to revolt, strove to represent itself to the weak
body as reason, yet it was only cowardice, which in such dis-
guises tried to ensnare the individual. A grave tugging and warn-
ing set in, and often it was only the last remnant of conscience
which decided the issue. Yet the more this voice admonished
one to caution, the louder and more insistent its lures, the sharper
resistance grew until at last, after a long inner struggle, con-
sciousness of duty emerged victorious. By the winter of 1915-16,
this struggle had for me been decided. At last my will was un-
disputed master. If in the first days I went over the top with
rejoicing and laughter, I was now calm and determined. And
this was enduring. Now Fate could bring on the ultimate tests
without my nerves shattering or my reason failing.

The young volunteer had become an old soldier.

And this transformation had occurred in the whole army. It
had issued old and hard from the eternal battles, and as for
those who could not stand up under the storm — well, they were
broken.

Now was the time to judge this army. Now, after two or three
years, during which it was hurled from one battle into another,
forever fighting against superiority in numbers and weapons,
suffering hunger and bearing privations, now was the time to
test the quality of this unique army.

166

Mein Kampe

Thousands of years may pass, but never will it be possible to
speak of heroism without mentioning the German army and the
World War. Then from the veil of the past the iron front of the
gray steel helmet will emerge, unwavering and unflinching, an
immortal monument. As long as there are Germans alive, they
will remember that these men were sons of their nation.

I was a soldier then, and I didn’t want to talk about politics.
And really it was not the time for it. Even today I harbor the
conviction that the humblest wagon-driver performed more valu-
able services for the fatherland than the foremost among, let us
say, ‘parliamentarians.’ I had never hated these big-mouths
more than now when every red-blooded man with something to
say yeUed it into the enemy’s face or appropriately left his tongue
at home and silently did his duty somewhere. Yes, in those days
I hated all those politicians. And if it had been up to me, a par-
liamentary pick-and-shovel battalion would have been formed at
once; then they could have chewed the fat to their hearts’ con-
tent without anno)ring, let alone harming, honest, decent people.

Thus, at that time I wanted to hear nothing of politics, but I
could not help taking a position on certain manifestations which
after all did affect the whole nation, and particularly concerned
us soldiers.

There were two things which then profoundly angered me and
which I regarded as harmful.

After the very first news of victories, a certain section of the
press, slowly, and in a way which at first was perhaps unrecog-
nizable to many, began to pour a few drops of wormwood into
the general enthusiasm. This was done beneath the mask of a
certain benevolence and well-meaning, even of a certain solici-
tude. They had misgivings about an excess of exuberance in
the celebration of the victories. They feared that in this form
it was unworthy of so great a nation and hence inappropriate.
The bravery and heroic courage of the German soldier were
something self-evident, they said, and people should not be
carried away too much by thoughtless outbursts of joy, if only
for the sake of foreign countries to whom a silent and dignified

Artificial Dampening of Enthusiasm

167

form of joy appealed more than unbridled exultation, etc.
Finally, we Germans even now should not forget that the war
was none of our intention and therefore we should not be ashamed
to confess in an open and manly fashion that at any time we
would contribute our part to a reconciliation of man kind. For
that reason it would not be prudent to besmirch the purity of
our army’s deeds by too much shouting, since the rest of the
world would have little understanding for such behavior. The
world admired nothing more than the modesty with which a
true hero silently and calmly forgets his deeds, for this was the
gist of the whole argument.

Instead of taking one of these creatures by his long ears, tying
him to a long pole and pulling him up on a long cord, thus making
it impossible for the cheering nation to insult the aesthetic senti-
ment of this knight of the inkpot, the authorities actually began
to issue remonstrances against ‘unseemly’ rejoicing over victories.

It didn’t occur to them in the least that enthusiasm once
scotched cannot be reawakened at need. It is an intoxication
and must be preserved in this state. And how, without this
power of enthusiasm, should a country withstand a struggle which
in all likelihood would make the most enormous demands on the
spiritual qualities of the nation?

I knew the psyche of the broad masses too well not to be aware
that a high ‘aesthetic’ tone would not stir up the fire that was
necessary to keep the iron hot. In my eyes it was madness
on the part of the authorities to be doing nothing to intensify
the glowing heat of passion; and when they curtailed what
passion was fortunately present, that was absolutely beyond me.

The second thing that angered me was the attitude which
they thought fit to take toward Marxism. In my eyes, this only
proved that they hadn’t so much as the faintest idea concerning
thi s pestilence. In all seriousness they seemed to believe that,
by the assurance that parties were no longer recognized, they
had brought Marxism to understanding and restraint.

They failed to understand that here no party was involved,
but a doctrine that must lead to the destruction of all humanity,

168

Mein Kampf

eq>ecialiy since this cannot be learned in the Jewified universi-
ties and, besides, so many, particularly among our higher offi-
cials, due to the idiotic conceit that is cultivated in them, don’t
think it worth the trouble to pick up a book and learn something
which was not in their university curriculum. The most gigantic
upheaval passes these ‘minds’ by without leaving the slightest
trace, which is why state institutions for the most part lag be-
hind private ones. It is to them, by God, that the popular proverb
best applies: ‘What the peasant doesn’t know, he won’t eat.’
Here, too, a few exceptions only confirm the rule.

It was an unequaled absurdity to identify the German worker
with Marxism in the days of August, 1914. In those hours the
German worker had made himself free from the embrace of this
venomous plague, for otherwise he would never have been able
to enter the struggle. The authorities, however, were stupid
enough to believe that Marxism had now become ‘national’;
a flash of genius which only shows that in these long years none
of these official guides of the state had even taken the trouble
to study the essence of this doctrine, for if they had, such an
absurdity could scarcely have crept in.

Marxism, whose goal is and remains the destruction of all
non-Je\sish national states, was forced to look on in horror as,
in the July days of 1914, the German working class it had en-
snared, awakened and from hour to hour began to enter the
service of the fatherland with ever-increasing rapidity. In a
few days the whole mist and swindle of this infamous betrayal
of the people had scattered away, and suddenly the gang of
Jewish leaders stood there lonely and forsaken, as though not a
trace remained of the nonsense and madness which for sixty
years they had been funneling into the masses. It was a bad
moment for the betrayers of the German working dass, but as
soon as the leaders recognized the danger which menaced tbsm,
they rapidly pulled the tarn-cap^ of lies over their ears, and
insolently mimicked the national awakening.

* Tam-cap: a cloak conferring invisibility. Occurs frequently in German
legends. Siegfried used one in his battle with BrUnhilde.

Use op Naked Force

169

But now the time had come to take steps against the whole
treacherous brotherhood of these Jewish poisoners of the people.
Now was the time to deal with them summarily without the
slightest consideration for any screams and complaints that
might arise. In August, 1914, the whole Jewish jabber about
international solidarity had vanished at one stroke from the
heads of the German working class, and in its stead, only a few
weeks later, American shrapnel began to pour down the blessings
of brotherhood on the helmets of our march columns. It would
have been the dut)'^ of a serious government, now that the
German worker had found his way back to his nation, to ex-
terminate mercilessly the agitators who were misleading the
nation.

If the best men were dying at the front, the least we could do
was to wipe out the vermin.

Instead of this. His Majesty the Kaiser himself stretched out
his hand to the old criminals, thus sparing the treacherous mur-
derers of the nation and giving them a chance to retrieve them-
selves.

So nov/ the viper could continue his work, more cautiously
than before, but all the more dangerously. While the honest
ones were dreaming of peace within their borders,^ the perjuring
cr im in a ls were organizing the revolution.

That such terrible half-measures should then be decided upon
made me more and more dissatisfied at heart; but at that time I
would not have thought it possible that the end of it all would
be so frightful.

What, then, should have been done? The leaders of the whole
movement should at once have been put behind bars, brought
to trial, and thus taken off the nation’s neck. All the implements
of militar y power should have been ruthlessly used for the ex-
termination of this pestilence. The parties should have been
dissolved, the Reichstag brought to its senses, with bayonets if
necessary, but, best of all, dissolved at once. Just as the Re-

* Burgfrieden, the special legal protection accorded to walled places and
cities in the Middle Ages.

170

Mein Kampf

public today can dissolve parties, this method should have been
used at that time, with more reason. For the life and death of
a whole nation was at stake!

One question came to the fore, however: can spiritual ideas
be exterminated by the sword? Can ‘philosophies’ be com-
bated by the use of brute force?

Even at that time I pondered this question more than once:

If we ponder analogous cases, particularly on a religious basis,
which can be foimd in history, the following fundamental prin-
ciple emerges:

Conceptions and ideas, as well as movements with a definite
spiritual foundation, regardless whether the latter is false or
true, can, after a certain point in their development, only be
broken with technical instruments of power if these physical
weapons are at the same time the support of a new kindling
thought, idea, or philosophy.

The application of force alone, mthout the impetus of a basic
spiritual idea as a starting point, can never lead to the destruc-
tion of an idea and its dissemination, except in the form- of a
complete extermination of even the very last exponent of the
idea and the destruction of the last tradition. This, however,
usually means the disappearance of such a state from the sphere
of political importance, often for an indefinite time and some-
times forever; for experience shows that such a blood sacrifice
strikes the best part of the people, since every persecution which
occurs without a spiritual basis seems morally unjustified and
whips up precisely the more valuable parts of a people in pro-
test, which results in an adoption of the spiritual content of the
unjustly persecuted movement. In many this occurs simply
through a feeling of opposition against the attempt to bludgeon
down an idea by brute force.

As a result, the number of inward supporters grows in propor-
tion as the persecution increases. Consequently, the complete
annihilation of the new doctrine can be carried out only through
a process of extermination so great and constantly inrrpasing
that in the end aU the truly valuable blood is drawn out of the

Use of Naked Force

171

people or state in question. The consequence is that, though a
so-called ‘inner’ purge can now take place, it wiU only be at the
cost of total impotence. Such a method will always prove vain
in advance if the doctrine to be combated has overstepped a
certain small cirde.

Consequently, here, too, as in all growth, the first period of
childhood is most readily susceptible to the possibility of ex-
termination, while with the mounting years the power of re-
sistance increases and only with the weakness of approaching old
age cedes again to new youth, though in another form and for
different reasons.

Indeed, nearly aU attempts to exterminate a doctrine and its
organizational expression, by force without spiritual foundation,
are doomed to failure, and not seldom end with the exact opposite
of the desired result for the following reason:

The very first requirement for a mode of struggle with the
weapons of naked force is and remains persistence. In other
words; only the continuous and steady application of the methods
for repressing a doctrine, etc., makes it possible for a plan to
succeed. But as soon as force wavers and alternates with for-
bearance, not only will the doctrine to be repressed recover again
and again, but it will also be in a position to draw new benefit
from every persecution, since, after such a wave of pressure has
ebbed away, indignation over the suffering induced leads new
supporters to the old doctrine, while the old ones will cling to it
with greater defiance and deeper hatred than before, and even
schismatic heretics, once the danger has subsided, will attempt
to return to their old viewpoint. Only in the steady and con-
stant application of force lies the very first prerequisite for suc-
cess. T his persistence, however, can always and only arise from
a definite spiritual conviction. Any violence which does not
spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain.
It lacks the stability which can only rest in a fanatical outlook.
It emanates from the momentary energy and brutal determina-
tion of an individual, and is therefore subject to the change of
personalities and to their nature and strength.

172

Mein Kampf

Added to this there is something else:

Any philosophy, whether of a religious or political nature —
and sometimes the dividing line is hard to determine — fights
less for the negative destruction of the opposing ideology than
for the positive promotion of its own. Hence its struggle is less
defensive than offensive. It therefore has the advantage even in
determining the goal, since this goal represents the victory of its
own idea, while, conversely, it is hard to determine when the
negative aim of the destruction of a hostile doctrine may be
regarded as achieved and assured. For this reason alone, the
philosophy’s offensive will be more systematic and also more
powerful than the defensive against a philosophy, since here, too,
as alw'ays, the attack and not the defense makes the deci-
sion. The fight against a spiritual power with methods of
violence remains defensive, however, until the sword becomes
the support, the herald and disseminator, of a new spiritual doc-
trine.

Thus, in summing up, we can establish the following:

Any attempt to combat a philosophy with methods of violence
will fail in the end, unless the fight takes the form of attack for
a new spiritual attitude. Only in the struggle between two
philosophies can the weapon of brutal force, persistently and
ruthlessly applied, lead to a decision for the side it supports.

This remained the reason for the failure of the struggle against
Marxism.

This was why Bismarck’s Socialist legislation finally failed and
had to fail, in spite of everything. Lacking was the platform of a
new philosophy for whose rise the fight could have been waged.
For only the proverbial wisdom of high government officials will
succeed in believing that drivel about so-called ‘state authority’
or ‘law and order’ could form a suitable basis for the spiritual
impetus of a life-and-death struggle.

Since a real spiritual basis for this struggle was lacking,
Bismarck had to entrust the execution of his Socialist legislation
to the judgment and desires of that institution which itself was a
product of Marxist thinking. By entrusting the fate of his war

Bourgeois Class Parties

173

on the Marxists to the well-wishing of bourgeois democracy, the
Iron Chancellor set the wolf to mind the sheep.

All this was only the necessary consequence of the absence of
a basic new anti-Marxist philosophy endowed with a stormy will
to conquer.

Hence the sole result of Bismarck’s struggle was a grave dis-
illusionment.

Were conditions different during the World War or at its
beginning? Unfortunately not.

The more I occupied myself with the idea of a necessary change
in the government’s attitude toward Social Democracy as the
momentary embodiment of Marxism, the more I recognized the
lack of a serviceable substitute for this doctrine. What would
be given the masses, if, just supposing, Social Democracy had
been broken? There was not one movement in existence which
could have been expected to succeed in drawing into its sphere
of influence the great multitudes of workers grown more or less
leaderless. It is senseless and more than stupid to believe that
the international fanatic who had left the class party would
now at once join a bourgeois party, in other words, a new class
organization. For, unpleasant as it may seem to various organ-
izations, it cannot be denied that bourgeois politicians largely
take class division quite for granted as long as it does not begin
to work out to their political disadvantage.

The denial of this fact only proves the effrontery, and also the
stupidity, of the liars.

Altogether, care should be taken not to regard the masses as
stupider than they are. In political matters feeling often decides
more correctly than reason. The opinion that the stupid inter-
national attitude of the masses is sufficient proof of the unsound-
ness of the masses’ sentiments can be thoroughly confuted by
the simple reminder that pacifist democracy is no less insane,
and that its exponents originate almost exclusively in the bour-
geois camp. As long as millions of the bourgeoisie stiU piously
worship their Jewish democratic press every morning, it very ill
becomes these gentlemen to make jokes about the stupidity of

174

Mein Kaupf

the ‘comrade’ who, in the last analy^, only swallows down the
same garbage, though in a different form. In both cases the
manufacturer is one and the same Jew.

Good care should be taken not to deny things that just happen
to be true. The fact that the class question is by no means
exclusively a matter of ideal problems, as, particularly before
the elections, some people would like to pretend, cannot be denied.
The class arrogance of a large part of our people, and to an even
greater extent, the underestimation of the manual worker, are
phenomena which do not exist only in the imagination of the
moonstruck.

Quite aside from this, however, it shows the small capacity
for thought of our so-called ‘intelligentsia’ when, particularly
in these circles, it is not understood that a state of affairs which
could not prevent the growth of a plague, such as Marxism hap-
pens to be, will certainly not be able to recover what has been
lost.

The ‘bourgeois’ parties, as they designate themselves, will
never be able to attach the ‘proletarian’ masses to their camp,
for here two worlds oppose each other, in part naturally and in
part artificially divided, whose mutual relation ^ can only be
struggle. The younger will be victorious — and this is Marxism.

Indeed, a struggle against Social Democracy in the year 1914
was conceivable, but how long this condition would be main-
tained, in view of the absence of any substitute, remained doubt-
ful.

Here there was a great gap.

I was of this opinion long before the War, and for this reason
could not make up my mind to join one of the existing parties.
In the course of events of the World War, I was reinforced in
this opinion by the obvious impossibility of taking up a ruthless
struggle against Social Democracy, owing to this very lack of a
movement which would have had to be more than a ‘parliamen-
tary’ party.

Hitler s word is ‘ V erhallungszustand,’ seldom if ever seen before in the
language. Literally; ‘condition of behavior or attitude.’

First Thoughts of Political Activity

17S

With my closer comrades I often expressed myself openly on
this point.

And now the first ideas came to me of later engaging in politi-
cal activity.

Precisely this was what caused me often to assure the small
circle of my friends that after the War, I meant to be a speaker in
addition to my profession.

I believe that I was very serious about this.

CHAPTER

VI

War Propaganda

Evver since I have been scrutinizing politi-
cal events, I have taken a tremendous interest in propagandist
activity. I saw that the Socialist-Marxist organizations mastered
and applied this instrument with astounding skill. And I soon
realized that the correct use of propaganda is a true art which
has remained practically unknown to the bourgeois parties.
Only the Christian-Social movement, especially in Lueger’s time,
achieved a certain virtuosity on this instrument, to which it
owed many of its successes.

But it was not until the War that it became evident what
immense results could be obtained by a correct application of
propaganda. Here again, unfortunately, all our studying had to
be done on the enemy side, for the activity on our side was
modest, to say the least. The total miscarriage of the German
‘enlightenment’ service stared every soldier in the face, and this
spurred me to take up the question of propaganda even more
deeply than before.

There was often more than enough time for thinking , and the
enemy offered practical instruction which, to our sorrow, was
only too good.

For what we failed to do, the enemy did, with amazing skill
and really brilliant calculation. I, myself, learned enormously
from this enemy war propaganda. But time passed and left
no trace in the minds of all those who should have benefited;

Propaganda — A Means

177

partly because they considered themselves too clever to learn
from the enemy, partly owing to lack of good will.

Did we have anything you could call propaganda?

I regret that I must answer in the negative. Everything that
actually was done in this field was so inadequate and wrong
from the very start that it certainly did no good and sometimes
did actual harm.

The form was inadequate, the substance was psychologically
wrong: a careful examination of German war propaganda can
lead to no other diagnosis.

There seems to have been no clarity on the very first question :
Is propaganda a means or an end?

It is a means and must therefore be judged with regard to its
end. It must consequently take a form calculated to support the
aim which it serves. It is also obvious that its aim can vary in
importance from the standpoint of general need, and that the
inner value of the propaganda will vary accordingly. The aim
for which we were fighting the War was the loftiest, the most
overpowering, that man can conceive: it was the freedom and
independence of our nation, the security of our future food sup-
ply, and — our national honor; a thing which, despite all con-
trary opinions prevailing today, nevertheless exists, or rather
should exist, since peoples without honor have sooner or later
lost their freedom and independence, which in turn is only the
result of a higher justice, since generations of rabble without
honor deserve no freedom. Any man who wants to be a cowardly
slave can have no honor, or honor itself would soon fall into
general contempt.

The German nation was engaged in a struggle for a human
existence, and the purpose of war propaganda should have been
to support this struggle; its aim to help bring about victory.

When the nations on this planet fight for existence — when
the question of destiny, ‘to be or not to be,’ cries out for a solu-
tion — then all considerations of humanitarianism or aesthetics
crumble into nothingness; for all these concepts do not float
about in the ether, they arise from man’s imagination and are

178

Mein Kampf

bound up with man. When he departs from this world, these con-
cepts are again dissolved into nothingness, for Nature does not
know them. And even among mankind, they belong only to a
few nations or rather races, and this in proportion as they
emanate from the feeling of the nation or race in question.
TT iiTnanitarianism and aesthetics would vanish even from a
world inhabited by man if this world were to lose the races that
have created and upheld these concepts.

But all such concepts become secondarj’ when a nation is fight-
ing for its e.vistence; in fact, they become totally irrelevant to
the forms of the struggle as soon as a situation arises where they
might paralyze a struggling nation’s power of self-preservation.
And that h^ always been their only visible result.

As for humanitarianism, Moltke ’ said years ago that in war it
lies in the brevity of the operation, and that means that the
most aggressive fighting technique is the most humane.

But when people trj" to approach these questions with drivel
about aesthetics, etc., really only one answer is possible; where
the destiny and existence of a people are at stake, all obligation
toward beauty ceases. The most unbeautiful thing there can be
in human life is and remains the yoke of slavery. Or do these
Schwabing ‘ decadents view the present lot of ^le German people
as ‘aesthetic’? Certainly w^e don’t have to discuss these matters
with the Jews, the most modern inventors of this cultural per-
fume. Their whole existence is an embodied protest against the
aesthetics of the Lord’s image.

And since these criteria of humanitarianism and beauty must
be eliminated from the struggle, they are also inapplicable to
propaganda.

Propaganda in the War was a means to an end, and the end
was the struggle for the existence of the German people; conse-
quently, propaganda coidd only be considered in accordance with

* General Helmuth von Moltke (1800-91) became chief of the Prussian
General Staff ia 1859. He modernized the Prussian army and was the
founder of the German Genera] Staff.

* Schwabing; the bohemian quarter of Munich, located near the univeraty.

Propaganda Only por the Masses

179

the principles that were valid for this struggle. In this case the
most cruel weapons were humane if they brought about a quicker
victory; and only those methods were beautiful which helped the
nation to safeguard the dignity of its freedom.

This was the only possible attitude toward war propaganda in
a life-and-death struggle like ours.

If the so-called responsible authorities had been clear on this
point, they would never have fallen into such uncertainty over
the form and application of this weapon: for even propaganda is
no more than a weapon, though a frightful one in the hand of
an expert.

The second really decisive question was this: To whom should
propaganda be addressed? To the scientifically trained intelli-
gentsia or to the less educated masses?

It must be addressed always and exclusively to the masses.

What the intelligentsia — or those who today unfortunately
often go by that name — what they need is not propaganda but
scientific instruction. The content of propaganda is not science
any more than the object represented in a poster is art. The
art of the poster lies in the designer’s ability to attract the atten-
tion of the crowd by form and color. A poster advertising an art
exhibit must direct the attention of the public to the art being
exhibited; the better it succeeds in this, the greater is the art of
the poster itself. The poster should give the masses an idea of
the significance of the exhibition, it should not be a substitute
for the art on display. Anyone who wants to concern himself
with the art itself must do more than study the poster; and it
will not be enough for him just to saunter through the exhibi-
tion. We may expect him to examine and immerse himself in
the individual works, and thus little by little form a fair opinion.

A similar situation prevails with what we today call propa-
ganda.

The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific train-
ing of the individual, but in calling the masses’ attention to
certain facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is
thus for the first time placed within their field of vision.

180

Mein Kampf

The whole art consists in doing this so skillfully that everyone
will be convinced that the fact is real, the process necessary, the
necessity correct, etc. But since propaganda is not and cannot
be the necessity in itself, since its function, like the poster, con-
sists in attracting the attention of the crowd, and not in educat-
ing those who are already educated or who are striving after
education and knowledge, its effect for the most part must be
aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the
so-called intellect.

All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must
be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is
addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended
to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be.
But if, as in propaganda for sticking out a war, the aim is to
influence a whole people, we must avoid excessive intellectual
demands on our public, and too much caution cannot be exerted
in this direction.

The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more exclusively
it takes into consideration the emotions of the masses, the more
effective it will be. And this is the best proof of the soundness or
unsoundness of a propaganda campaign, and not success in
pleasing a few scholars or young aesthetes.

The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional
ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically
correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of
the broad masses. The fact that our bright boys do not under-
stand this merely shows how mentally lazy and conceited they
are.

Once we understand how necessary it is for propaganda to be
adjusted to the broad mass, the following rule results:

It is a mistake to make propaganda many-sided, like scientific
instruction, for instance.

The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their in-
telhgence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous.
In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be
limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans

Psychology of Propaganda

181

until the last member of the public understands what you want
him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this
slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for
the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In
this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely can-
celled out.

Thus we see that propaganda must follow a simple line and cor-
respondingly the basic tactics must be psychologically sound.

For instance, it was absolutely wrong to make the enemy ridicu-
lous, as the Austrian and German comic papers did. It was
absolutely wrong because actual contact with an enemy soldier
was bound to arouse an entirely different conviction, and the
results were devastating; for now the German soldier, under the
direct impression of the enemy’s resistance, felt himself swindled
by his propaganda service. His desire to fight, or even to stand
firm, was not strengthened, but the opposite occurred. His
courage flagged.

By contrast, the war propaganda of the English and Americans
was psychologically sound. By representmg the Germans to
their own people as barbarians and Huns, they prepared the in-
dividual soldier for the terrors of war, and thus helped to preserve
him from disappointments. After this, the most terrible weapon
that was used against him seemed only to confirm what his
propagandists had told him; it likewise reinforced his faith in
the truth of his government’s assertions, while on the other
hand it increased his rage and hatred against the vile enemy.
For the cruel effects of the weapon, whose use by the enemy he
now came to know, gradually came to confirm for him the ‘Hun-
nish’ brutality of the barbarous enemy, which he had heard all
about; and it never dawned on him for a moment that his own
weapons possibly, if not probably, might be even more terrible
in their effects.

And so the English soldier could never feel that he had been
misinformed by his own countrymen, as unhappily was so much
the case with the German soldier that in the end he rejected
everything coming from this source as ‘swindles’ and ‘bunk.’

182

Mein Kampe

All this resulted from the idea that any old simpleton (or even
somebody who was intelligent ‘in other things’) could be assigned
to propaganda work, and the failure to realize that the most
brilliant psychologists would have been none too good.

And so the German war propaganda offered an unparalleled
example of an ‘enlightenment’ service working in reverse, since
any correct psychology was totally lacking.

There was no end to what could be learned from the enemy by
a man who kept his eyes open, refused to let his perceptions be
ossified, and for four and a half years privately turned the storm-
flood of enemy propaganda over in his brain.

What our authorities least of all understood was the very
first axiom of all ;^iropagandist activity: to wit, the basically
subjective and one-sided attitude it must take toward every
question it deals with. In this connection, from the very begin-
ning of the War and from top to bottom, such sins were com-
mitted that we were entitled to doubt whether so much absurdity
could really be attributed to pure stupidity alone.

What, for example, would we say about a poster that was
supposed to advertise a new soap and that described other soaps
as ‘good’?

We would only shake our heads.

Exactly the same applies to political advertising.

The function of propaganda is, for example, not to weigh and
ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to em-
phasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task
is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it
favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with aca-
demic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and
imflinchingly.

It was absolutely wrong to discuss war-guilt from the stand-
point that Germany alone could not be held responsible for the
outbreak of the catastrophe; it would have been correct to load
every bit of the blame on the shoulders of the enemy, even if
this had not really corresponded to the true facts, as it actually
did.

The German Mania for Objectivity

183

And what was the consequence of this half-heartedness?

The broad mass of a nation does not consist of diplomats, or
even professors of political law, or even individuals capable of
forming a rational opinion; it consists of plain mortals, wavering
and inclined to doubt and tmcertainty. As soon as our own
propaganda admits so much as a glimmer of right on the other
side, the foundation for doubt in our own right has been laid.
The masses are then in no position to distinguish where for-
eign injustice ends and our own begins. In such a case they be-
come uncertain and suspicious, especially if the enemy refrains
from going in for the same nonsense, but unloads every bit
of blame on his adversary. Isn’t it perfectly understandable that
the whole country ends up by lending mor^. credence to enemy
propaganda, which is more unified and cohere&t, than to its own?
And particularly a people that suffers from the mania of objec-
tivity as much as the Germans. For, after all this, everyone will
take the greatest pains to avoid doing the enemy any injustice,
even at the peril of seriously besmirching and even destroying
his own people and country.

Of course, this was not the intent of the responsible authorities,
but the people never realize that.

The people in their overwhelming majority are so feminine by
nature and attitude that sober reasoning determines their
thoughts and actions far less than emotion and feeling.

And this sentiment is not complicated, but very simple and
all of a piece. It does not have multiple shadings; it has a posi-
tive and a negative; love or hate, right or wrong, truth or lie,
never half this way and half that way, never partially, or that
kind of thing.

English propagandists understood all this most brilliantly —
and acted accordingly. They made no half statements that
might have given rise to doubts.

Their brilliant knowledge of the primitive sentiments of the
broad masses is shown by their atrocity propaganda, which was
adapted to this condition. As ruthless as it was brilliant, it
created the preconditions for moral steadfastness at the front.

184

Mein Kampf

even in the face of the greatest actual defeats, and just as strik-
ingly it piUoried the German enemy as the sole guilty party for
the outbreak of the War: the rabid, impudent bias and persist-
ence with which this lie was expressed took into account the
emotional, always extreme, attitude of the great masses and for
this reason was believed.

How effective this type of propaganda was is most strikingly
shown by the fact that after four years of war it not only enabled
the enemy to stick to its guns, but even began to nibble at our
own people.

It need not surprise us that our propaganda did not enjoy this
success. In its inner ambiguity alone, it bore the germ of ineffec-
tualness. And finally its content was such that it was very un-
likely to make the necessary impression on the masses. Only
our feather-brained ‘statesmen’ could have dared to hope that
this insipid pacifistic bUge could fire men’s spirits till they were
willing to die.

As a result, their miserable stuff ^ was useless, even harmful
in fact.

But the most brilliant propagandist technique wiU yield no
success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind con-
stantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to
a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often
in this world, persistence is the first and most important require-
ment for success.

Particularly in the field of propaganda, we must never let
ourselves be led by aesthetes or people who have grown blas6:
not by the former, because the form and expression of our propa-
ganda would soon, instead of being suitable for the masses, have
drawing power only for literary teas; and of the second we must
beware, because, lacking in any fresh emotion of their own, they
are always on the lookout for new stimulation. These people
are quick to weary of everything; they want variety, and they
are never able to feel or understand the needs of their fellow men
who are not yet so callous. They are always the first to criticize

^ ‘Zeug.’ Second edition has ‘Frodukt.’

Enemy War Propaganda

185

a propaganda campaign, or rather its content, which seems to
them too old-fashioned, too hackneyed, too out-of-date, etc.
They are always after novelty, in search of a change, and this
makes them mortal enemies of any effective political propaganda.
For as soon as the organization and the content of propaganda
begin to suit their tastes, it loses all cohesion and evaporates
completely.

The purpose of propaganda is not to provide interesting dis-
traction for blase young gentlemen, but to convince, and what I
mean is to convince the masses. But the masses are slow-moving,
and they always require a certain time before they are ready
even to notice a thing, and only after the simplest ideas are re-
peated thousands of times will the masses finally remember
them.

When there is a change, it must not alter the content of what
the propaganda is driving at, but in the end must always say
the same thing. For instance, a slogan must be presented from
different angles, but the end of all remarks must always and im-
mutably be the slogan itself. Only in this way can the propa-
ganda have a unified and complete effect.

This broadness of outline from which we must never depart,
in combination with steady, consistent emphasis, allows our final
success to mature. And then, to our amazement, we shall see
what tremendous results such perseverance leads to — to results
that are almost beyond our understanding.

All advertising, whether in the field of business or politics,
achieves success through the continuity and sustained uniformity
■of its application.

Here, too, the example of enemy war propaganda was typical;
limited to a few points, devised exclusively for the masses, car-
ried on with indefatigable persistence. Once the basic ideas
and methods of execution were recognized as correct, they were
applied throughout the whole War without the slightest change.
At first the claims of the propaganda were so impudent that
people thought it insane; later, it got on people’s nerves; and in
the end, it was believed. After four and a half years, a revolution

186

Mein Kampf

broke out In Germany; and its slogans originated in the enemy’s
war propaganda.

And La England they understood one more thing: that this
spiritual weapon can succeed only if it is applied on a tremendous
scale, but that success amply covers all costs.

There, propaganda was regarded as a weapon of the first order,
while in our country it was the last resort of unemployed poli-
ticians and a comfortable haven for slackers.

And, as was to be ejected, its results all in all were zero.

The Revolution

CHAPTER

VII

ITH THE YEAR 1915 enemy p ropaganda
began in our country, after 1916 it became more and more in-
tensive, tiU finally, at the beginning of the year 1918, it swelled
to a positive flood. Now the results of this seduction could be
seen at every step. The army gradually learned to think as the
enemy wanted it to.

And the German counter-action was a complete failure.

In the person of the man whose intellect and will made him its
leader, the army had the intention and determination to take
up the struggle in this field, too, but it lacked the instrument
which would have been necessary. And from the psychological
point of view, it was wrong to have this enlightenment work car-
ried on by the troops themselves. If it was to be effective, it
had to come from home. Only then was there any assurance of
success among the men who, after all, had been performing im
mortal deeds of heroism and privation for nearly four years for
this homeland.

But what came out of the home country?

Was this failure stupidity or crime?

In midsummer of 1918, after the evacuation of the southern
bank of the Marne, the German press above all conducted itself
with such miserable awkwardness, nay, criminal stupidity, that
my wrath mounted by the day, and the question arose within
me: Is there really no one who can put an end to this spiritual
squandering of the army’s heroism?

188

Mein Kampe

What happened in France in 1914 when we swept into the
country in an unprecedented storm of victory? What did Italy
do in the days after her Isonzo front had collapsed? And what
again did France do in the spring of 1918 when the attack of the
German divisions seemed to lift her positions off their hinges and
the far-reaching arm of the heavy long-range batteries began
to knock at the doors of Paris?

How they whipped the fever heat of national passion into the
faces of the hastily retreating regiments in those countries!
What propaganda and ingenious demagogy were used to hammer
the faith in final victory back into the hearts of the broken fronts!

Meanwhile, what happened in our country?

Nothing, or worse than nothing.

Rage and indignation often rose up in me when I looked at the
latest newspapers, and came face to face with the psychological
mass murder that was being committed.

More than once I was tormented by the thought that if Provi-
dence had put me in the place of the incapable or criminal in-
competents or scoundrels in our propaganda service, our battle
with Destiny would have taken a different turn.

In these months I felt for the first time the whole malice of
Destiny which kept me at the front in a position where every
nigger might accidentally shoot me to bits, while elsewhere I
would have been able to perform quite different services for the
fatherland!

For even then I was rash enough to believe that I would have
succeeded in this.

But I was a nameless soldier, one among eight million!

And so it was better to hold my tongue and do my duty in the
trenches as best I could.

* • *

In the summer of 1915, the first enemy leaflets fell into our
hands.

The First Enemy Leaflets

189

Aside from a few changes in the form of presentation, their
content was almost alwa)^ the same, to wit: that the suffering
was growing greater and greater in Germany; that the War was
going to last forever while the hope of winning it was gradually
vanishing; that the people at home were, therefore, longing for
peace, but that ‘militarism’ and the ‘Kaiser’ did not allow it;
that the whole world — to whom this was very well known —
was, therefore, not waging a war on the German people, but ex-
clusively against the sole guilty party, the Kaiser; that, therefore,
the War would not be over before this enemy of peaceful hiunan-
ity should be eliminated; that when the War was ended, the
libertarian and democratic nations would take the Geman
people into the league of eternal world peace, which would be
assured from the hour when ‘Prussian militarism’ was destroyed.

The better to illustrate these claims, ‘letters from home’ were
often reprinted whose contents seemed to confirm these asser-
tions.

On the whole, we only laughed in those days at all these
efforts. The leaflets were read, then sent back to the higher
staffs, and for the most part forgotten until the wind again sent
a load of them sailing down into the trenches; for, as a rule, the
leaflets were brought over by airplanes.

In this type of propaganda there was one point which soon
inevitably attracted attention: in every sector of the front where
Bavarians were stationed, Prussia was attacked with extraordi-
nary consistency, with the assurance that not only was Prussia
on the one hand the really guilty and responsible party for the
whole war, but that on the other hand there was not the slightest
hostility against Bavaria in particular; however, there was no
helping Bavaria as long as she served Prussian militarism and
helped to pull its chestnuts out of the fire.

■ Actually this kind of propaganda began to achieve certain
effects in 1915. The feeling against Prussia grew quite visibly
among the troops — yet not a single step was taken against it
from above. This was more than a mere sin of. omission, and
sooner or later we were bound to suffer most catastrophic^y

190

Mein Kampf

for it; and not just the ‘Prussians,’ but the whole German people,
to which Bavaria herself is not the last to belong.

In this direction enemy propaganda began to achieve un-
questionable successes from 1916 on.

Likewise the complaining letters direct from home had long
been having their effect. It was no longer necessary for the
enemy to transmit them to the frontline soldiers by means of
leaflets, etc. And against this, aside from a few psychologically
idiotic ‘admonitions’ on the part of the ‘government,’ nothing
was done. Just as before, the front was flooded with this poison
dished up by thoughtless women at home, who, of course, did
not suspect that this was the way to raise the enemy’s confidence
in victory to the highest pitch, thus consequently to prolong and
sharpen the sufferings of their men at the fighting front. In
the time that followed, the senseless letters of German women
cost hundreds of thousands of men their lives.

Thus, as early as 1916, there appeared various phenomena that
would better have been absent.^ The men at the front complained
and ‘beefed’; they began to be dissatisfied in many ways and
sometimes were even righteously indignant. While they starved
and suffered, while their people at home lived in misery, there
was abundance and high-living in other circles. Yes, even at the
fighting front aU was not in order in this respect.

Even then a slight crisis was emerging — but these were still
‘internal’ affairs. The same man, who at first had cursed and
grumbled, silently did his duty a few minutes later as though
this was a matter of course. The same company, which at first
was discontented, clung to the piece of trench it had to defend
as though Germany’s fate depended on these few hundred yards
of mudholes. It was still the front of the old, glorious army of
heroes!

I was to learn the difference between it and the homeland in a
glaring contrast

At the end of September, 1916, my division moved into the

* Mrscheinwngen die besser nicht vorhanden gewesen waren.’ Second edition
has: ‘bedenkliche Erscheimingen’i disquieting phenomena.

Wounded

191

Battle of the Somme. For us it was the first of the tremendous
battles of materiel which now followed, and the impression was
hard to describe — it was more like hell than warj^

Under a whirlwind of drumfire that lasted for weeks, the
German front held fast, sometimes forced back a little, then again
pushing forward, but never wavering.

On October 7, 1916, 1 was wounded.

I was brought safely to the rear, and from there was to return
to Germany with a transport.

Two years had now passed since I had seen the homeland,
under such conditions an almost endless time. I could scarcely
imagine how Germans looked who were not in uniform. As I
lay in the field hospital at Hermies, I almost collapsed for fright
when suddenly the voice of a German woman serving as a nurse
addressed a man lying beside me.

For the first time in two years to hear such a sound!

The closer our train which was to bring us home approached
the border, the more inwardly restless each of us became. All
the towns passed by, through which we had ridden two years
previous as young soldiers: Brussels, Louvain, Liege, and at last
we thought we recognized the first German house by its high
gable and beautiful shutters.

The fatherland!

In October, 1914, we had burned with stormy enthusiasm as
We crossed the border; now silence and emotion reigned. Each
of us was happy that Fate again permitted him to see what he
had had to defend so hard with his life, and each man was weU-
nigh ashamed to let another look him in the eye.

It was almost on the anniversary of the day when I left for
the front that I reached the hospital at Beelitz near Berlin.

What a change! From the mud of the Battle of the Somme
into the white beds of this miracidous building! In the beginning
we hardly dared to lie in them properly. Only gradually could
we reaccustom ourselves to this new world.

Unfortunately, this world was new in another respect as well.

The spirit of the army at the front seemed no longer to be a

192

Mein Kampp

guest here.^ Here for the first time I heard a thing that was still
unknown at the front; men bragging about their own cowardice 1
For the cursing and ‘beefing’ you could hear at the front were
never an incitement to shirk duty or a glorification of the coward.
No! The coward still passed as a coward and as nothing else;
and the contempt which struck him was still general, just like the
admiration that was given to the real hero. But here in the
hospital it was partly almost the opposite: the most unscrupu-
lous agitators did the talking and attempted with all the means
of their contemptible eloquence to make the conceptions of the
decent soldiers ridiculous and hold up the spineless coward as an
example. A few wretched scoundrels in particular set the tone.
One boasted that he himself had pulled his hand through a
barbed-wire entanglement in order to be sent to the hospital;
in spite of this absurd wound he seemed to have been here for
an endless time, and for that matter he had only gotten into the
transport to Germany by a swindle. This poisonous fellow went
so far in his insolent effrontery as to represent his own cowardice
as an emanation * of higher bravery than the hero’s death of an
honest soldier. Many listened in silence, others went away, but
a few assented.

Disgust mounted to my throat, but the agitator was calmly
tolerated in the institution. What could be done? The manage-
ment couldn’t help knowing, and actually did know, exactly
who and what he was. But nothing was done.

When I could again walk properly, I obtained permission to
go to Berlin.

Clearly there was dire misery everywhere. The big city was
suffering from hunger. Discontent was great. In various sol-
diers’ homes the tone was like that in the hospital. It gave you
the impression that these scoundrels were intentionally frequent-
ing such places in order to spread their views.

But much, much worse were conditions in Munich itself!

When I was discharged from the hospital as cured and trans-
ferred to the replacement battalion, I thought I could no longer

‘ ‘sckien hier kein Cast mekr su sein.' * ‘Attsfluss.’

Slackers

193

recognize the city. Anger, discontent, cursing, wherever you
went! In the replacement battalion itself the mood was beneath
all criticism. Here a contributing factor was the immeasurably
clumsy way in which the field soldiers were treated by old train-
ing officers who hadn’t spent a single hour in the field and for
this reason alone were only partially able to create a decent rela-
tionship with the old soldiers. For it had to be admitted that
the latter possessed certain qualities which could be explained
by their service at the front, but which remained totally incom-
prehensible to the leaders of these replacement detachments,
while the officer who had come from the front was at least able
to explain them. The latter, of course, was respected by the mpn
quite difierently than the rear commander. But aside from this,
the general mood was miserable: to be a slacker passed almost
as a sign of higher wisdom, while loyal steadfastness was con-
sidered a s)anptom of inner weakness and narrow-mindedness.
The offices were fiUed with Jews. Nearly every clerk was a Jew
and nearly every Jew was a derk. I was amazed at this plethora
of warriors of the chosen people and could not help but com-
pare them with their rare representatives at the front.

As regards economic life, things were even worse Here the
Jewish people had become really ‘indispensable.’ The spider was
slowly beginning to suck the blood out of the people’s pores.
Through the war corporations, they had found an instrument with
which, little by little, to finish off the national free economy.

The necessity of an unlimited centralization was emphasized.

Thus, in the year 1916-17 nearly the whole of production was
under the control of Jewish finance.

But against whom was the hatred of the people directed?

At this time I saw with horror a catastrophe approaching
which, unle ss averted in time, would inevitably lead to collapse.

While the Jew robbed the whole nation and pressed it beneath
his domination, an agitation was carried on against the ‘Prus-
sians.’ At home, as at the front, nothing was done against this
poisonous propaganda. No one seemed to suspect that the col-
lapse of Prussia would not by a long shot bring with it a resurgence

194

Mein Kampe

of Bavaria; no, that on the contrary any fall of Ihe one would
inevitably carry the other along with it into the abyss.

I felt very badly about this behavior. In it I could only see
the craftiest trick of the Jew, calculated to distract the general
attention from himself and to others. While the Bavarian and
the Prussian fought, he stole the existence of both of them from
under their nose; while the Bavarians were cursing the Prussians,
the Jew organized the revolution and smashed Prussia and
Bavaria at once.

I could not bear this accursed quarrel among German peoples,
and was glad to return to the front, for v/hich I reported at once
after my arrival in Munich.

At the beginning of March, 1917, 1 was back with my regiment.
* # *

Toward the end of 1917, the low point of the army’s dejection
seemed to have passed. The whole army took fresh hope and
fresh courage after the Russian coUapse. The conviction that
the War would end with the victory of Germany, after all, began
to seize the troops more and more. Again singing could be heard
and the Calamity Janes became rarer. Again people believed in
the future of the fatherland.

Especially the Italian collapse of autumn, 1917, had had the
most wonderful effect; in this victory we saw a proof of the possi-
bility of breaking through the front, even aside from the Russian
! theater of war. A glorious faith flowed again into the hearts of
the millions, enabling them to await spring, 1918, with relief and
confidence. The foe was visibly depressed. In this winter he
remained quieter than usual. This was the lull before the storm.

But, while those at the front were undertaking the last prepa-
rations for the final conclusion of the eternal struggle, while end-
less transports of men and materiel were rolling toward the West
Front, and the troops were being trained for the great attack —
the biggest piece of chicanery in the whole war broke out in
Germany.

The Army’s New Hope

195

Germany must not be victorious; in the last hour, with victory
already threatening to be with the German banners, a mpans
was chosen which seemed suited to stifle the German spring
attack in the germ with one blow, to make victory impossible:

The munitions strike was organized.

If it succeeded, the German front was bound to coUapse, and
the Vorwarts ’ ' desire that this time victory should not be with
the German banners would inevitably be fulfilled. Owing to the
lack of munitions, the front would inevitably be pierced in a
few weeks; thus the offensive was thwarted, the Entente saved,
international capital was made master of Germany, and the
inner aim of the Marxist swindle of nations achieved.

To smash the national economy and establish the rule of inter-
national capital — a goal which actually was achieved, thanks
to the stupidity and credulity of the one side and the bottomless
cowardice of the other.

To be sure, the munitions strike did not have all the hoped-for
success with regard to starving the front of arms; it collapsed too
soon for the lack of munitions as such — as the plan had been —
to doom the army to destruction.

But how much more terrible was the moral damage that had
been done!

In the first place: What was the army fighting for if the home-
land itself no longer wanted victory? For whom the immense
sacrifices and privations? The soldier is expected to fight for
victory and the homeland goes on strike against it!

And in the second place: What was the effect on the enemy?

In the winter of 1917 to 1918, dark clouds appeared for the
first time in the firmament of the Allied world. For nearly four
years they had been assailing the German warrior and had been
unable to encompass his downfall; and all this while the German
had only his shield arm free for defense, while his sword was

* Vorwarts. Official organ of the Social Democratic Party of Germany,
founded in 1884 as the Berliner Volksblati. It was renamed Vorwdrts in 1890.
Wilhelm Liebknecht directed it from then until his death in 1900. It con-
tinued to appear until 1933.

196

Mein Kampf

obliged to strike, now in the East, now in the South. But now
at last the giant’s back was free. Streams of blood had flown
before he adi^nistered final defeat to one of his foes. Now in the
West his shield was going to be joined by his sword; up till then
the enemy had been unable to break his defense, and now he
hims elf was facing attack.

The enemy feared him and trembled for their victory.

In London and Paris one deliberation followed another, but
at the front sleepy silence prevailed. Suddenly their high mighti-
nesses lost their effrontery. Even enemy propaganda was having
a hard time of it; it was no longer so easy to prove the hopeless-
ness of German victory.

But this also applied to the Allied troops at the fronts. A
ghastly light began to dawn slowly even on them. Their inner
attitude toward the German soldier had changed. Until then
he may have seemed to them a fool destined to defeat; but now
it was the destroyer of the Russian ally that stood before them.
The limitation of the German offensives to the East, though
bom of necessity, now seemed to them brilliant tactics. For
three years these Germans had stormed the Russian front, at
first it seemed without the slightest success. The Allies almost
laughed over this aimless undertsddng; for in the end the Russian
giant with his overwhelming number of men was sure to remain
the victor while Germany would inevitably collapse from loss of
blood. Reality seemed to confirm this hope.

Since the September days of 1914, when for the first time the
endless hordes of Russian prisoners from the Battle of Tannen-
berg began moving into Germany over the roads and railways,
this stream was almost without end — but for every defeated
and destroyed army a new one arose. Inexhaustibly the gigantic
Empire gave the Tsar more and more new soldiers and the War
its new victims. How long could Germany keep up this race?
Would not the day inevitably come when the Germans would win
their last victory and still the Russian armies would not be march-
ing to their last battle? And then what? In all human probar
bilify the victory of Russia could be postponed, but it was bound
to come

‘Germany Facing Revolution!’

197

Now all these hopes were at an end: the ally who had laid the
greatest blood sacrifices on the altar of common interests was at
the end of his strength, and lay prone at the feet of the inexor-
able assailant. Fear and horror crept into the hearts of the
soldiers who had hitherto believed so blindly. They feared the
coming spring. For if up until then they had not succeeded in
defeating the German when he was able to place only part of
his forces on the Western Front, how could they count on vic-
tory now that the entire power of this incredible heroic state
seemed to be concentrating for an attack on the West?

The shadows of the South Tyrolean Mountains lay oppressive
on the fantasy; as far as the mists of Flanders, the defeated
armies of Cadoma conjured up gloomy faces, and faith in victory
ceded to fear of coming defeat.

Then — when out of the cool nights the Allied soldiers already
seemed to hear the dull rumble of the advancing storm units
of the German army, and with eyes fixed in fear and trepidation
awaited the approaching judgment, suddenly a flaming red light
arose in Germany, casting its glow into the last shell-hole of the
enemy front: at the very moment when the German divisions
were receiving their last instructions for the great attack, the
general strike broke out in Germany.

At first the world was speechless. But then enemy propaganda
hurled itself with a sigh of relief on this help that came in the
eleventh hour. At one stroke the means was found to restore the
sinking confidence of the Allied soldiers, once again to represent
the probability of victory as certain,^ and transform dread anxiety
in the face of coming events into determined confidence. Now
the regiments awaiting the German attack could be sent into
the greatest battle of aU time with the conviction that, not the
boldness of the German assault would decide the end of this war,
but the perseverance of the defense. Let the Germans achieve
as many victories as they pleased; at home the revolution was
before the door, and not the victorious army.

“Rnglisb, French, and American newspapers began to implant
* ‘die WahrscheirilichkeU cds sicker hinmsUMen . . .’

198

Mein Kampf

this faith in the hearts of their readers while an infinitely shrewd
propaganda raised the spirits of the troops at the front.

‘Germany facing revolution! Victory of the Allies inevitable!’
This was the best medicine to help the wavering poilu and Tommy
back on their feet. Now rifles and machine guns could again be
made to fire, and a headlong flight in panic fear was replaced by
hopeful resistance.

This was the result of the munitions strike. It strengthened
the enemy peoples’ belief in victory and relieved the paralyzing
despair of the Allied front — in the time that followed, thousands
of German soldiers had to pay for this with their blood. The
instigators of this idlest of all scoundrelly tricks were the as-
pirants to the highest state positions of revolutionary Germany.

On the German side, it is true, the visible reaction to this
crime could at first apparently be handled; on the enemy side,
however, the consequences did not fail to appear. The resistance
had lost the aimlessness of an army giving up all as lost, and took
on the bitterness of a struggle for victory.

For now, in aU human probability, victory was inevitable if
the Western Front could stand up under a German attack for
only a few months. The parliaments of the Entente, however,
recognized the possibilities for the future and approved unprece-
dented expenditures for continuing the propaganda to disrupt
Germany.

I had the good fortune to fight in the first two offensives and
in the last.

These became the most tremendous impressions of my life;
tremendous because now for the last time, as in 1914 , the fight
lost the character of defense and assumed that of attack. A
sigh of relief passed through the trenches and the dugouts of
the German army when at length, after more than three years’
endurance in the enemy hell, the day of retribution came. Once

Last Wreaths of Immortal Laurel

199

again the victorious battalions cheered and hung the last wreaths
of immortal laurel on their banners rent by the storm of victory.
Once again the songs of the fatherland roared to the heavens
along the endless marching columns, and for the last time the
Lord’s grace smiled on His ungrateful children.

In midsummer of 1918, oppressive sultriness lay over the front.
At home there was fighting. For what? In the different detach-
ments of the field army all sorts of things were being said: that
the war was now hopeless and only fools could believe in victory.
That not the people but only capital and the monarchy had an
interest in holding out any longer — all this came from the
homeland and was discussed even at the front.

At first the front reacted very little. What did we care about
universal suffrage? Had we fought four years for that? It was
vile banditry to steal the war aim of the dead heroes from their
very graves. The young regiments had not gone to their death
in Flanders crying: ‘Long live universal suffrage and the secret
ballot,’ but crying: ‘Deutschland ilber Alles in der Welt.’ A small,
yet not entirely insignificant, difference. But most of those who
cried out for suffrage hadn’t ever been in the place where they
now wanted to fight for it. The front was unknown to the whole
political party rabble. Only a small fraction of the Parliamentar-
ian gentlemen could be seen where all decent Germans with
sound limbs left were sojourning at that time.

And so the old persoimel at the front was not very receptive to
this new war aim of Messrs. Ebert, Scheidemann,^ Barth, Lieb-

^ Friedrich Ebert and PhiKp Scheidemann were leaders of the majority
Socialists who took over the German government on the abdication of
William II on November 9, 1918. On November 25, representatives of the
new provincial governments met in Berlin and decided on the election of a
National Assembly. Elections took place on January 19. The Assembly,
which met in Weimar on February 6, was controlled by a coalition of the.j

200

Mein Kampf

nitz, etc. They couldn’t for the life of them see why suddenly the
slackers should have the right to arrogate to themselves control
of the state over the heads of the army.

My personal attitude was established from the very start. I
hated the whole gang of miserable party scoimdrels and betrayers
of the people in the extreme. It had long been clear to me that
this whole gang was not really concerned with the welfare of the
nation, but with fillin g empty pockets. For this they were ready
to sacrifice the whole nation, and if necessary to let Germany be
destroyed; and in my eyes this made them ripe for hanging. To
take consideration of their wishes was to sacrifice the interests
of the working people for the benefit of a few pickpockets; these
wishes could only be fulfilled by giving up Germany.

And the great majority of the embattled army still thought
the same. Only the reinforcements coming from home rapidly
grew worse and worse, so that their arrival meant, not a rein-
forcement but a weakening of our fighting strength. Especially
the yoimg reinforcements were mostly worthless. It was often
hard to believe that these were sons of the same nation which
had once sent its youth out to the battle for Ypres.

In August and September, the symptoms of disorganization
increased more and more rapidly, although the effect of the
enemy attack was not to be compared with the terror of our
former defensive battles. The past Battle of Flanders and the
Battle of the Somme had been awesome by comparison.

At the end of September, my division arrived for the third
time at the positions which as young volunteer regiments we had
once stormed.

What a memory!

Socialists, the Center, and the Democrats, led by Scheidemann. On Feb-
ruary 11, it chose Friedrich Ebert President of Germany. The Scheidemann
Cabinet resigned on June 20 because it was unwilling to sign the peace
treaty. The treaty was signed by the succeeding Cabinet of Gustav Bauer
after the Assembly had voted acceptance. The Socialist and Democrat
majority were attacked by both Right and Left for accepting this ‘national

Stricken bv Yellow-Cross Gas

201

In October and November of 1914, we had there received our
baptism of fire. Fatherland love in our heart and songs on our
lips, our young regiments had gone into the battle as to a dance.
The most precious blood there sacrificed itself joyfully, in the
faith that it was preserving the independence and freedom of
the fatherland.

In July, 1917, we set foot for the second time on the ground
that was sacred to all of us. For in it the best comrades slumbered,
still almost children, who had run to their death with gleaming
eyes for the one true fatherland.

We old soldiers, who had then marched out with the regiment,
stood in respectful emotion at this shrine of ‘loyalty and obedi-
ence to the death.’

Now in a hard defensive battle the regiment was to defend
this soil which it had stormed three years earlier.

With three weeks of drumfire the Englishman prepared the
great Flanders offensive. The spirits of the dead seemed to
quicken; the regiment clawed its way into the filthy mud, bit
into the various holes and craters, and neither gave ground nor
wavered. As once before in this place, it grew steadily smaller
and thinner, until the British attack finally broke loose on July
13, 1917.

In the first days of August we were relieved.

The regiment had turned into a few companies: crusted with
mud they tottered back, more like ghosts than men. But aside
from a few hundred meters of shell holes, the Englishman had
found nothing but death.

Now, in the fall of 1918, we stood for the third time on the
storm site of 1914. The little city of Comines where we then
rested had now become our battlefield. Yet, though the battle-
field was the same, the men had changed: for now ‘political dis-
cussions’ went on even among the troops. As everywhere, the
poison of the hinterland began, here too, to be effective. And
the younger recruit fell down completely — for he came from
home.

In the night of October 13, the English gas attack on the

202

Mein Kampf

southern front before Ypres burst loose; they used yellow-cross
gas, whose effects were still unknown to us as far as personal ex-
perience was concerned. In this same night I myself was to
become acquainted with it. On a hiU south of Wervick, we ramp
on the evening of October 13 into several hours of drumfire with
gas shells which continued all night more or less violently. As
early as midnight, a number of us passed out, a few of our com-
rades forever. Toward morning I, too, was seized with p ain
which grew worse with every quarter hour, and at seven in the
morning I stumbled and tottered back with burning eyes;
taking with me my last report of the War.

A few hours later, my eyes had turned into glowing coals;
it had grown dark around me.

Thus I came to the hospital at Pasewalk in Pomerania, and
there I was fated to experience — the greatest villainy of the
century.^

* * *

For a long time there had been something indefinite but re-
pulsive in the air. People were telling each other that in the
next few weeks it would ‘ start in’ — but I was unable to imagine
what was meant by this. First I thought of a strike like that of
the spring. Unfavorable rumors were constantly coming from
the navy, which was said to be in a state of ferment. But tln'g^
too, seemed to me more the product of the im agination of indi-
vidual scoundrels than an affair involving real masses. Even in
the hospital, people were discussing the end of the War which
they hoped would come soon, but no one counted on anything
immediate. I was unable to read the papers.

In November the general tension increased.

And then one day, suddenly and unexpectedly, the calamity
descended. Sailors arrived in trucks and proclaimed the revolu-

» ‘greatest villainy of the century’ changed to ‘revolution’ in sernnd
edition.

All Sacripices in Vain

203

tion; a few Jewish youths were the ‘leaders’ in this struggle for
the ‘freedom, beauty, and dignity’ of our national existence.
None of them had been at the front. By way of a so-called
‘gonorrhoea hospital,’ the three Orientals had been sent back
home from their second-line base. Now they raised the red rag
in the homeland.

In the last few days I had been getting along better. The
piercing pain in my eye sockets was diminishing; slowly I suc-
ceeded in distinguishing the broad outlines of the things about
me. I was given grounds for hoping that I should recover my
eyesight at least well enough to be able to pursue some profession
later. To be sure, I could no longer hope that I would ever be
able to draw again. In any case, I was on the road to improve-
ment when the monstrous thing happened.

My first hope was stUl that this high treason might still be a
more or less local affair. I also tried to bolster up a few comrades
in this view. Particularly my Bavarian friends in the hospital
were more than accessible to this. The mood there was anything
but ‘revolutionary.’ I could not imagine that the madness would
break out in Munich, too. Loyalty to the venerable House of
Wittelsbach ^ seemed to me stronger, after all, than the will of a
few Jews. Thus I could not help but believe that this was merely
a Putsch on the part of the navy and would be crushed in the
next few days.

The next few days came and with them the most terrible cer-
tainty of my life. The rumors became more and more oppressive.
What I had taken for a local affair was now said to be a general
revolution. To this was added the disgraceful news from the
front. They wanted to capitulate. Was such a thing really
possible?

On November 10, the pastor came to the hospital for a short
address: now we learned everything.

In extreme agitation, I, too, was present at the short speech.
The dignified old gentleman seemed aU a-tremble as he informed

* Wittdsbach. Family of the Kings of Bavaria, dating back to the tenth
century.

204

Mein Kampf

us that the House of HoUenzoUern should no longer bear the
German imperial crown; that the fatherland had become a
'republic’; that we must pray to the Almighty not to refuse His
blessing to this change and not to abandon our people in the
times to come. He could not help himself, he had to speak a few
words in memory of the royal house. He began to praise its
services in Pomerania, in Prussia, nay, to the German fatherland,
and — here he began to sob gently to himself — in the little hall
the deepest dejection settled on all hearts, and I believe that not
an eye was able to restrain its tears. But when the old gentle-
man tried to go on, and began to teU us that we must now end
the long War, yes, that now that it was lost and we were throw-
ing ourselves upon the mercy of the victors, our fatherland would
for the future be exposed to dire oppression, that the armistice
should be accepted with confidence in the magnanimity of our
previous enemies — I could stand it no longer. It became im-
possible for me to sit stiU one minute more. Again everything
went black before my eyes; I tottered and groped my way back
to the dormitory, threw m)rself on my bunk, and dug my burn-
ing head into my blanket and pillow.

Since the day when I had stood at my mother’s grave, I had
not wept. When in my youth Fate seized me with merciless
hardness, my defiance mounted. When in the long war years
Death snatched so many a dear comrade and friend from our
ranks, it would have seemed to me almost a sin to complain —
after all, were they not dying for Germany? And when at length
the creeping gas — in the last days of the dreadful struggle —
attacked me, too, and began to gnaw at my eyes, and beneath
the fear of going blind forever, I nearly lost heart for a moment,
the voice of my conscience thimdered at me: Miserable wretch,
are you going to cry when thousands are a hundred times worse
off than you! And so I bore my lot in dull silence. But now I
could not help it. Only now did I see how all personal suffer-
ing vanishes in comparison with the misfortune of the father-
land.

And so it had all been in vain. In vain all the sacrifices and

Decision to Go into Politics

205

privations; in vain the hunger and thirst of months which were
often endless; in vain the hours in which, with mortal fear clutch-
ing at our hearts, we nevertheless did our duty; and in vain the
death of two millions who died. Would not the graves of all the
hundreds of thousands open, the graves of those who with faith
in the fatherland had marched forth never to return? Would
ihey not open and send the silent mud- and blood-covered heroes
back as spirits of vengeance to the homeland which had cheated
them with such mockery of the highest sacrifice which a man
can make to his people in this world? Had they died for this, the
soldiers of August and September, 1914? Was it for this that
in the autumn of the same year the volunteer regiments marched
after their old comrades? Was it for this that these boys of
seventeen sank into the earth of Flanders? Was this the mean-
ing of the sacrifice which the German mother made to the father-
land when with sore heart she let her best-loved boys march
off, never to see them again? Did all this happen only so that a
gang of wretched criminals could lay hands on the fatherland?

Was it for this that the German soldier had stood fast in the
sun’s heat and in snowstorms, hungry, thirsty, and freezing,
weary from sleepless nights and endless marches? Was it for
this that he had lain in the hell of the drumfire and in the fever
of gas attacks without wavering, always thoughtful of his one
duty to preserve the fatherland from the enemy peril?

Verily these heroes deserved a headstone: ‘Thou Wanderer who
comest to Germany, tell those at home that we lie here, true to
the fatherland and obedient to duty.’

And what about those at home — ?

And yet, was it only our own sacrifice that we had to weigh in
the balance? Was the Germany of the past less precious? Was
there no obligation toward our own history? Were we still
worthy to relate the glory of the past to ourselves? And how
could this deed be justified to future generations?

Miserable and degenerate criminals!

The more I tried to achieve clarity on the monstrous event in
this hour, the more the shame of indignation and disgrace burned

206

Mein Kampe

my brow. What was all the pain in my eyes compared to this
misery?

There followed terrible days and even worse nights — I knew
that all was lost. Only fools, liars, and criminals could hope in
the mercy of the enemy. In these nights hatred grew in me,
hatred for those responsible for this deed.

In the days that followed, my own fate became known to me.

I could not help but laugh at the thought of my own future
which only a short time before had given me such bitter con-
cern. Was it not ridiculous to expect to build houses on such
ground? At last it became clear to me that what had happened
was what I had so often feared but had never been able to
believe with my emotions.

Kaiser William II was the first German Emperor to hold out
a conciliatory hand to the leaders of Marxism, without suspect-
ing that scoundrels have no honor. While they still held the
imperial hand in theirs, their other hand was reaching for the
dagger.

There is no making pacts with Jews; there can only be the
hard: either — or.

I, for my part, decided to go into politics.

CHAPTER

VIII

The Beginning of My Political Activity

A

XjLt the end of November, 1918, 1 returned
to Munich. Again I went to the replacement battalion of my
regiment, which was in the hands of ‘soldiers’ councils.’ Their
whole activity was so repellent to me that I decided at once to
leave again as soon as possible. With Schmiedt Ernst, a faithful
war comrade, I went to Traunstein and remained there till the
camp was broken up.

In March, 1919, we went back to Munich.

The situation was untenable and moved inevitably toward a fur-
ther continuation of the revolution. Eisner’s death only hastened
the development and finally led to a dictatorship of the Councils,^
or, better expressed, to a passing nUe of the Jews, as had been
the original aim of the instigators of the whole revolution.

At this time endless plans chased one another through my head.
For days I wondered what could be done, but the end of every
meditation was the sober realization that I, nameless as I was,
did not possess the least basis for any useful action. I shall come
back to speak of the reasons why then, as before, I could not de-
cide to join any of the existing parties.

In the course of the new revolution of the Councils I for the

* Kurt Eisner (1867-1919). Edited the ForwffriJ from 1899 to 1905. In 1917
he went over from the Majority to the Independent Socialists. On November
7, 1918, he led the revolution in Munich and headed a government of Ma-
ioiity and Independent Socialists. He vras assassinated on February 21, 1919

208

Mein Kampe

first timp acted in such a way as to arouse the disapproval of the
Central Council. Early in the morning of April 27, 1919, 1 was
to be arrested, but, faced with my leveled carbine, the three
scoundrels lacked the necessary courage and marched off as they
had come.

A few days after the liberation of Munich, I was ordered to re-
port to the examining commission concerned with revolutionary
occurrences in the Second Infantry Regiment.

This was my first more or less purely political activity.

Only a few weeks afterward I received orders to attend a
‘ course ’ that was held for members of the armed forces. In it the
soldier was supposed to learn certain fundamentals of civic think-
ing. For me the value of the whole affair was that I now obtained
an (qjportunity of meeting a few like-minded comrades with
whom I could thoroughly discuss the situation of the moment.
All of us were more or less firmly convinced that Germany could
no bnger be saved from the impending collapse by the parties of
the November crime, the Center and the Social Democracy, and
that the so-called ‘bourgeois-national’ formations, even with the
best of intentions, could never repair what had happened. A whole
series of preconditions were lacking, without which such a task
^ply could not succeed. The following period confirmed the
opinion we then held. Thus, in our own circle we discussed the
foundation of a new party. The baac ideas which we had in mind
were the same as those later realized in the ‘ German Workers’
Party.’ The name of the movement to be founded would from
the very begiiming have to offer the possibility of approaching
the broad masses; for without this quality the whole task seemed
aimless and superfluous. Thus we arrived at the name of ‘Social
Revolutionary Party’; this because the social views of the new
organization did indeed mean a revolution.

But the deeper ground for this lay in the following: however
much I had concerned m)rself with economic questions at an
earlier day, my efforts had remmned more or less within the
limits resulting from the contemplation of social questions as
such. Only later did this framework broaden through examina"

The Ttvo Types op Capital

209

tion of the German alliance policy. This in very great part was
the outcome of a false estimation of economics as well as un-
darity concerning the possible basis for sustaining the German
people in the future. But all these ideas were based on the opinion
that capital in any case was soldy the result of labor and, there-
fore, like itself was subject to the correction of all those factors
which can either advance or thwart human activity; and the
national importance of capital was that it depended so com-
pletely on the greatness, freedom, and power of the state, hence
of the nation, that this bond in itself would inevitably cause
capital to further the state and the nation owing to its simple in-
stinct of self-preservation or of reproduction. This dependence
of capital on the independent free state would, therefore, force
capital in turn to champion this freedom, power, strength, etc.,
of the nation.

Thus, the task of the state toward capital was comparatively
simple and dear: it only had to make certain that capital remain
the handmaiden of the state and not fancy itself the mistress of
the nation. This point of view could then be defined between
two restrictive limits; preservation of a solvent, national, and
independent economy on the one hand, assurance of the sodal
rights of the workers on the other.

Previously I had been unable to recognize with the desired
darity the difierence between this pure capital as the end result
of productive labor and a capital whose existence and essence
rests exdusively on speculation. For this I lacked the initial in-
spiration, which had simply not come my way.

But now this was provided most amply by one of the various
gentlemen lecturing in the above-mentioned course: Gottfried
Feder.^

^ Gottfried Feder: born in Wdrzburg in 1883, An engineer by profession.
In 1917, he founded the Deutscher Kampfbund zur Brechung der Zinsknechl-
schaft (German Fighting League for the breaking of interest slavery).
Became a National Socialist member of the Reichstag in 1924. Later, he
became head of Hauplabteilung 1 (^Wirtschaftsdbteilung) der Reichsleilung der
NSDAP, an economic body with elaborate plans for socialization. This was

210

Mein Kampf

For the first time in my life I heard a principled discussion of
international stock exchange and loan capital.

Right after listening to Feder’s first lecture, the thought ran
through my head that I had now found the way to one of the
most essential premises for the foundation of a new party.

« * *

In my eyes Feder’s merit consisted in having established with
ruthless brutality the speculative and economic character of
stock exchange and loan capital, and in having exposed its eternal
and age-old presupposition which is interest. His arguments were
so sound in all fundamental questions that their critics from the
start questioned the theoretical correctness of the idea less than
they doubted the practical possibility of its execution. But what
in the eyes of others was a weakness of Feder’s arguments, in my
eyes constituted their strength.

* * *

It is not the task of a theoretician to determine the varying
degrees in which a cause can be realized, but to establish the
cause as such: that is to say : he must concern himself less with the
road than with the goal. In this, however, the basic correctness
of an idea is decisive and not the difficulty of its execution. As
soon as the theoretician attempts to take account of so-called
‘utility’ and ‘reality’ instead of the absolute truth, his work will
cease to be a polar star of seeking humanity and instead will be-
come a prescription for everyday life. The theoretician of a move-
ment must lay down its goal, the politician strive for its fulfill-

dissolved by Hitler in 1932 to please the industrialists. From 1933 to 1934
Feder was Under-Secretaiy of State for Labor. Then he became professor
of economics at the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg and virtually
disappeared from public life.

Theorist and Politician

211

ment. The thinking of the one, therefore, will be determined by
eternal truth, the actions of the other more by the practici
reality of the moment. The greatness of the one lies in the ab-
solute abstract soundness of his idea, that of the other in his cor-
rect attitude toward the given facts and their advantageous ap-
plication; and in this the theoretician’s aim must serve as his
guiding star. While the touchstone for the stature of a politician
may be regarded as the success of his plans and acts — in other
words, the degree to which they become reality — the realization
of the theoretician’s ultimate purpose can never be realized, since,
though human thought can apprehend truths and set up crystal-
dear aims, complete fulfillment will fail due to the general im-
perfection and inadequacy of man. The more a:bstractly correct
and hence powerful the idea will be, the more impossible remains
its complete fulfillment as long as it continues to depend on hu-
man beings. Therefore, the stature of the theoretician must not
be measured by the fulfillment of his aims, but by their soundness
and the influence they have had on the development of humanity.
If this were not so, the founders of religion could not be counted
among the greatest men of this earth, since the fulfillment of
their ethical purposes will never be even approximately complete.
In its workings, even the religion of love is only the weak reflection
of the will of its exalted founder; its significance, however, lies in
the direction which it attempted to give to a imiversal human
development of culture, ethics, and morality.

The enormous difference between the tasks of the theoretician
and the politician is also the reason why a union of both in one
person is almost never found. This is especially true of the so-
called 'successful’ politician of small format, whose activity for
the most part is only an ‘ art of the possible,’ as Bismarck rather
modestly characterized politics in general. The freer such a
‘politician’ keeps himself from great ideas, the easier and often
the more visible, but always the more rapid, his successes will be.
To be sure, they are dedicated to earthly transitoriness and
sometimes do not survive the death of their fa.thers. The work of
such politicians, by and large, is unimportant lor posterity, since

212

Mein Kampe

their successes in the present are based solely on keeping at a
distance all really great and profound problems and ideas, which
as such would only have been of value for later generations.

The execution of such aims, which have value and significance
for the most distant times, usually brings little reward to the man
who champions them and rarely finds understanding among the
great masses, who for the moment have more understanding for
beer and milk regulations than for farsighted plans for the future,
whose realization can only occur far hence, and whose benefits
will be reaped only by posterity.

Thus, from a certain vanity, which is always a cousin of stupid-
ity, the great mass of politicians will keep far removed from all
really weighty plans for the future, in order not to lose the mo-
mentary S3mipathy of the great mob. The success and significance
of such a politician lie then exclusively in the present, and do not
exist for posterity. But small minds are little troubled by this;
they are content.

With the theoretician conditions are different. His importance
lies almost always solely in the future, for not seldom he is what
is described by the world as ‘unworldly.’ For if the art of the
politician is really the art of the possible, the theoretician is one
of those of whom it can be said that they are pleasing to the gods
only if they demand and want the impossible. He will almost
always have to renounce the recognition of the present, but in
return, provided his ideas are immortal, will harvest the fame of
posterity.

In long periods of humanity, it may happen once that the poli-
tician is wedded to the theoretician. The more profound this
fusion, however, the greater are the obstacles opposing the work
of the politician. He no longer works for necessities which will be
understood by the fijst best shopkeeper, but for aims which only
the fewest comprehend. Therefore, his life is torn by love and
hate. The protest of the present which does not imderstand the
man, struggles with the recognition of posterity — for which he
works.

For the greater a man’s works for the future, the less the pre-

Marathon Runners of History

213

sent can comprehend them; the harder his fight, and the rarer
success. If, however, once in centuries success does come to a
man, perhaps in his latter days a faint beam of his coming glory
may shine upon him. To be sure, these great men are only the
Marathon runners of history; the laurel wreath of the present
touches only the brow of the dying hero.

Among them must be counted the great warriors in this world
who, though not imderstood by the present, are nevertheless
prepared to carry the fight for their ideas and ideals to their end.
They are the men who some day will be closest to the heart of the
people; it almost seems as though every individual feels the duty
of compensating in the past for the sins which the present once
committed against the great.^ Their life and work are followed
with admiring gratitude and emotion, and especially in days of
gloom they have the power to raise up broken hearts and despair-
ing souls.

To them belong, not only the truly great statesmen, but aU
other great reformers as well. Beside Frederick the Great stands
Martin Luther as well as Richard Wagner.

As I listened to Gottfried Feder’s first lecture about the ‘break-
ing of interest slavery,’ I knew at once that this was a theoretical
truth which would inevitably be of inunense importance for the
future of the German people. The sharp separation of stock ex-
change capital from the national economy offered the possibility
of opposing the internationalization of the German economy
without at the same time menacing the foundations of an inde-
pendent national self-maintenance by a struggle against all
capital. The development of Germany was much too clear in my
eyes for me not to know that the hardest battle would have to be
fought, not against hostile nations, but against international
capital. In Feder’s lecture I sensed a powerful dogan for this
coming struggle.

And here again later developments proved how correct our
sentiment of those days was. Today the know-it-aUs among our

‘ ‘Nun in der Vergangenheit gut zu Tnachen was die Gegemvart eiitst an den
Grossen gesUndigt hatte.’

214

Mein Kampf

bourgeois politicians no longer laugh at us: today even they, in sc
far as they are not conscious liars, see that international stock
exchange capital was not only the greatest agitator for the War,
but that especially, now that the fight is over, it spares no effort
to turn the peace into a heU.

The fight against international finance and loan capital
became the most important point in the program of the
German nation’s struggle for its economic independence and
freedom.

As regards the objections of so-called practical men, they can
be answered as follows: All fears regarding the terrible economic
consequences of the ‘breaking of interest slavery’ are superfluous;
for, in the first place, the previous economic prescriptions have
turned out very badly for the German people, and your positions
on the problems of national self-maintenance remind us strongly
of the reports of similar experts in former times, for example,
those of the Bavarian medical board on the question of introduc-
ing the railroad. It is well known that none of the fears of this
exalted corporation were later realized: the travelers in the trains
of the new ‘steam horse’ did not get dizzy, the onlookers did not
get sick, and the board fences to hide the new invention from
sight were given up — only the board fences around the brains
of all so-caUed ‘experts’ were preserved for posterity.

In the second place, the following should be noted: every idea,
even the best, becomes a danger if it parades as a purpose in it-
self, being in reality only a means to one. For me and all true
National Socialists there is but one doctrine: people and father-
land.

What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduc-
tion of our race and owr people, the sustenance of our children and
the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the father-
land, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission
allotted it by the creator of the universe.

Every thought and every idea, every doctrine and all know-
ledge, must serve this purpose. And everything must be ex-
amined from this point of view and used or rejected according to

The ‘Educational Officer^ 215

its utility. Then no theory will stiffen into a dead doctrine, since
it is life alone that all things must serve.

Thus, it was the conclusions of Gottfried Feder that caused me
to delve into the fundamentals of this field with which I had pre-
viously not been very familiar.

I began to study again, and now for the first time really
achieved an understanding of the content of the Jew Karl Marx’s
life effort. Only now did his Kapital become really intelligible to
me, and also the struggle of the Social Democracy against the
national economy, which aims only to prepare the ground for the
domination of truly international finance and stock exchange
capital.

But also in another respect these courses were of the greatest
consequence to me.

One day I asked for the floor. One of the participants felt ob-
liged to break a lance for the Jews and began to defend them in
lengthy arguments. This aroused me to an answer. The over-
whelming majority of the students present took my standpoint.
The result was that a few days later I was sent into a Munich
regiment as a so-called ‘educational officer.’

Discipline among the men was still comparatively weak at that
time. It suffered from the after-effects of the period of soldiers’
councils. Only very slowly and cautiously was it possible to re-
place voluntary obedience — the pretty name that was given
to the pig-sty under Kurt Eisner — by the old military discipline
and subordination. Accordingly, the men were now expected to
learn to feel and think in a national and patriotic way. In these
two directions lay the field of my new activity.

I started out with the greatest enthusiasm and love. For all at
once I was offered an opportunity of speaking before a larger
audience; and the thing that I had always presumed from pure
feeling without knowing it was now corroborated: I could

216

Mein Kampf

‘speak.’ My voice, too, had grown so much better that I could
be sufficiently understood at least in every comer of the small
squad rooms.

No task could make me happier than this, for now before being
discharged I was able to perform useful services to the institution
which had been so close to my heart; the army.

And I could boast of some success: in the course of my lectures
I led many hundreds, indeed thousands, of comrades back to their
people and fatherland. I ‘nationalized’ the troops and was thus
also able to help strengthen the general discipline.

Here again I became acquainted with a number of like-minded
comrades, who later began to form the nucleus of the new move-
ment.

CHAPTER

IX

//

The 'German Workers' Party'

One day I received orders from my head-
quarters to find out what was behind an apparently political
organization which was planning to hold a meeting within the
next few days under the name of ‘German Workers’ Party’ —
with Gottfried Feder as one of the speakers. I was told to go and
take a look at the organization and then make a report.

The curiosity of the army toward political parties in those days
was more than understandable. The revolution had given the
soldiers the right of political activity, and it was just the most
inexperienced among them who made the most ample use of it.
Not until the moment when the Center and the Social Democracy
were forced to recognize, to their own grief, that the sympathies
of the soldiers were beginning to turn away from the revolution-
ary parties toward the national movement and reawakening, did
they see fit to deprive the troops of suffrage again and prohibit
their political activity.

It was illuminating that the Center and the Marxists should
have taken this measure, for if they had not undertaken this cur-
tailment of ‘ civil rights ’ — as the political equality of the soldiers
after the revolution was called — within a few years there would
have been no revolution, and hence no more national dishonor
and disgrace. The troops were then well on their way toward
ridding the nation of its leeches and the stooges of the Entente
within our walls. The fact that the so-called ‘national’ parties

218

Mein Kampe

voted enthusiastically for the correction of the previous views of
the November criminals, and thus helped to blunt the instrument
of a national rising, again showed what the eternally doctrinaire
ideas of these innocents among innocents can lead to. This
bourgeoisie was really suffering from mental senility; in all seri-
ousness they harbored the opinion that the army would again
become what it had been, to wit, a stronghold of German military
power; while the Center and Marxism planned only to tear out
its dangerous national poison fang, without which, however, an
army remains forever a police force, but is not a troop capable
of fighting an enemy — as has been amply proved in the time
that followed.

Or did our ‘national politicians’ believe that the development
of the army could have been other than national? That would
have been confoundedly like the gentlemen and is what comes
of not being a soldier in war but a big-mouth; in other words, a
parliamentarian with no notion of what goes on in the hearts of
men who are reminded by the most colossal past that they were
once the best soldiers in the world.

And so I decided to attend the above-mentioned meeting of
this party which up till then had been entirely unknown to me
too.

In the evening when I entered the ‘Leiber Room’ of the former
Sterneckerbrau in Munich, I found some twenty to twenty-five
people present, chiefly from the lower classes of the population.

Feder’s lecture was known to me from the courses, so I was
able to devote myself to an inspection of the organization itself.

My impression was neither good nor bad; a new organization
like so many others. This was a time in which anyone who was
not satisfied with developments and no longer had any confidence
in the existing parties felt called upon to found a new party.
Everywhere these organizations sprang out of the ground, only to
vanish silently after a time. The founders for the most part had
no idea what it means to make a party — let alone a movement —
out of a club. And so these organizations nearly always stifle
automatically in their absurd philistinism.

The ‘German Workers’ Party’

219

I judged the ‘German Workers’ Party’ no differently. When
Feder finally stopped talking, I was happy, I had seen enough
and wanted to leave when the free discussion period, which was
now announced, moved me to remain, after all. But here, too,
everything seemed to run along insignificantly until suddenly a
‘professor’ took the floor; he first questioned the soundness of
Feder’s arguments and then — after Feder replied very well —
suddenly appealed to ‘the facts,’ but not without recommending
most urgently that the young party take up the ‘separation’ of
Bavaria from ‘Prussia’ as a particularly important program-
matic point. With bold effrontery the man maintain ed that in
this case German-Austria would at once join Bavaria, that the
peace would then become much better, and more similar non-
sense. At this point I could not help demanding the floor and
giving the learned gentleman my opinion on this point — with
the result that the previous speaker, even before I was finished,
left the hall like a wet poodle. As I spoke, the audience had lis-
tened with astonished faces, and only as I was beginning to say
good night to the assemblage and go away did a man come leaping
after me, introduce himself (I had not quite understood his name),
and press a little booklet into my hand, apparently a political
pamphlet, with the urgent request that I read it.

This was very agreeable to me, for now I had reason to hope
that I might become acquainted with this dull organization in a
simpler way, without having to attend any more such interesting
meetings. Incidentally this apparent worker had made a good
impression on me. And with this I left the hall.

At that time I was still living in the barracks of the Second
Infantry Regiment in a little room that still very distinctly bore
the traces of the revolution. During the day I was out, mostly
with the Forty-First Rifle Regiment, or at meetings, or lectures
in some other army unit, etc. Only at night did I sleep in my
quarters. Since I regularly woke up before five o’clock in the
morning, I had gotten in the habit of putting a few left-overs or
crusts of bread on the floor for the mice which amused themselves
in my little room, and watching the droll little beasts chasing

220

Mein Kampe

around after these choice morsels. I had known so much poverty
in my life that I was well able to imagine the hunger, and hence
also the pleasure, of the little creatures.

At about five o’clock in the morning after this meeting, I thus
lay awake in my cot, watching the chase and bustle. Since I
could no longer fall asleep, I suddenly remembered the past
evening and my mind fell on the booklet which the worker had
given me. I began to read. It was a little pamphlet in which the
author, this same worker, described how he had returned to na-
tional thinking out of the Babel of Marxist and trade-unionist
phrases; hence also the title: My Political Awakening} Once I
had begun, I read the little book through with interest; for it
reflected a process similar to the one which I myself had gone
through twelve years before. Involuntarily I saw my own devel-
opment come to life before my eyes. In the course of the day I
reflected a few times on the matter and was finally about to put
it aside when, less than a week later, much to my surprise, I re-
ceived a postcard saying that I had been accepted in the German
Workers’ Party; I was requested to express myself on the subject
and for this purpose to attend a committee meeting of this party
on the following Wednesday.

I must admit that I was astonished at this way of ‘winning’
members and I didn’t know whether to be angry or to laugh. I
had no intention of joining a ready-made party, but wanted to
found one of my own. What they asked of me was presumptuous
and out of the question.

I was about to send the gentlemen my answer in writing when
curiosity won out and I decided to appear on the appointed day
to explain my reasons by word of mouth.

^ Anton Drexler, Mein PoUiisches Erwachen (Miincben, E. Boepple, 1920).
Drexler was the founder and leading spirit of the DeulscJte Arbeiterpartd,
which Hitler transformed into the National Socialist Party. A mechanic in
the Munich railroad workshop, he was sickly, uneducated, a poor speaker.
His claim to leadership was his idea of winning the German worker for the
nationalist idea. Soon after Hitler assumed leadership of the party, Drexler
was expelled. From 1924 to 1928, he was Vice-President of the Bavarian
Diet. In 1930, he became reconciled with Hitler, but never returned to
active {politics.

The ‘Committee Meeting’

221

Wednesday came. The tavern in which the said meeting was
to take place was the ‘Altes Rosenbad’ in the Herrenstrasse, a
very run-down place that no one seemed to stray into more than
once in a blue moon. No wonder, in the year 1919 when the menu
of even the larger restaurants could offer only the scantiest and
most modest allurements. Up to this time this tavern had been
totally unknown to me.

I went through the ill-lit dining room in which not a soul was
sitting, opened the door to the back room, and the ‘session’ was
before me. In the dim light of a broken-down gas lamp four
young people sat at a table, among them the author of the little
pamphlet, who at once greeted me most joyfully and bade me
welcome as a new member of the German Workers’ Part}^

Really, I was somewhat taken aback. As I was now informed
that the actual ‘national chairman’ had not yet arrived, I de-
cided to wait with my declaration. This gentleman finally ap-
peared. It was the same who had presided at the meeting in
the Sterneckerbrau on the occasion of Feder’s lecture.

Meanwhile, I had again become very curious, and waited ex-
pectantly for what was to come. Now at least I came to know the
names of the individual gentlemen. The chairman of the ‘na-
tional organization’ was a Herr Harrer,* that of tlie Mimich
District, Anton Drexler.

The minutes of the last meeting were read and the secretary
was given a vote of confidence. Next came the treasury report —
all in all the association possessed seven marks and fifty pfennigs
— for which the treasurer received a vote of general confidence.
This, too, was entered in the minutes. Then the first chairman
read the answers to a letter from Kiel, one from Dusseldorf, and
one from Berlin, and everyone expressed approval. Next a report
was given on the incoming mail: a letter from Berlin, one from
Dusseldorf and one from Kiel, whose arrival seemed to be received

* Elarl Harrer, reporter on the formerly liberal, at that time German Na-
tionalist MUncheiver-Augsburger Abendzeilung. He bore the title of Reichs
riiaimian of the Party. He is described as a dub-footed, ungainly figure,
proletarian and shabbily dressed.

222

Mein Kampf

with great satisfaction. This growing correspondence was inter-
preted as the best and most visible sign of the spreading impor-
tance of the German Workers’ Party, and then — then there was
a long deliberation with regard to the answers to be made.

Terrible, terrible! This was dub life of the worst manner and
sort. Was I to join this organization?

Next, new memberships were discussed; in other words, my
capture was taken up.

I now began to ask questions — but, aside from a few direc-
I tives, there was nothing, no program, no leaflet, no printed matter
; at all, no membership cards, not even a miserable rubber stamp,
only obvious good faith and good intentions.

I had stopped smiling, for what was this if not a typical sign of
the complete helplessness and total despair of aU existing parties,
their programs, their piuposes, and their activity? The thing
that drove these few young people to activity that was out-
wardly so absurd was only the emanation of their inner voice,
which more instinctively than consciously showed them that all
parties up till then were suited neither for raising up the German
nation nor for curing its inner wounds. I quickly read the typed
‘directives’ and in them I saw more seeking than knowledge.
Much was vague or unclear, much was missing, but nothing was
present which could not have passed as a sign of a struggling
realization.

I knew what these men felt; it was the longing for a new move-
ment which should be more than a party in the previous sense of
the word.

That evening when I returned to the barracks I had formed my
judgment of this association.

I was facing the hardest question of my life: should I join or
should I decline?

Reason could advise me only to decline, but my feeling left me
no rest, and as often as I tried to remember the absurdity of this
whole club, my feeling argued for it.

I was restless in the days that followed.

I began to ponder back and forth. I had long been resolved to

A Final Decision

223

engage in political activity; that this could be done only in a new
movement was likewise clear to me, only the impetus to act had
hitherto been lacking. I am not one of those people who begin
something today and lay it down tomorrow, if possible taking up
something else again. This very conviction among others was the
main reason why it was so hard for me to make up my mind to
join such a new organization. I knew that for me a decision would
be for good, with no turning back. For me it was no passing game,
but grim earnest. Even then I had an instinctive revulsion to-
ward men who start everything and never carry anything out.
These jacks-of-all-trades were loathsome to me. I regarded the
activity of such people as worse than doing nothing.

And this way of thinking constituted one of the main reasons
why I could not make up my mind as easily as some others do to
found a cause which either had to become everything or else
would do better not to exist at all.

Fate itself now seemed to give me a hint. I should never have
gone into one of the existing large parties, and later on I shall go
into the reasons for this more closely. This absurd little organiza-
tion with its few members seemed to me to possess the one ad-
vantage that it had not frozen into an ‘organization,’ but left the
individual an opportunity for real personal activity. Here it was
still possible to work, and the smaller the movement, the more
readily it could be put into the proper form. Here the content,
the goal, and the road could still be determined, which in the
existing great parties was impossible from the outset.

The longer I tried to think it over, the more the conviction
grew in me that through just such a little movement the rise of the
nation could some day be organized, but never through the politi-
cal parliamentary parties which dung far too greatly to the old
conceptions or even shared in the profits of the new regime. For
it was a new philosophy and not a new election slogan that had to
be prodaimed.

Truly a very grave decision — to begin transforming this in-
tention into reality!

What prerequisites did I myself bring to this task?

224

Mein Kampf

That I was poor and without means seemed to me the most
bearable part of it, but it was harder that I was numbered among
the nameless, that I was one of the millions whom chance permits
to live or summons out of existence without even their closest
neighbors condescending to take any notice of it. In addition,
there was the difficulty which inevitably arose from my lack of
schooling.

The so-called 'intelligentsia’ always looks down with a really
limitless condescension on anyone who has not been dragged
through the obligatory schools and had the necessary knowledge
pumped into him. The question has never been: What are the
man’s abilities? but; What has he learned? To these ‘educated’
people the biggest empty-head, if he is wrapped in enough di-
plomas, is worth more than the brightest boy who happens to
lack these costly envelopes. And so it was easy for me to imagine
how this ‘educated’ world would confront me, and in this I erred
only in so far as even then I still regarded people as better than
in cold reality they for the most part unfortunately are. As they
are, to be sure, the exceptions, as everywhere else, shine aU the
more brightly. Thereby, however, I learned always to distinguish
between the eternal students and the men of real ability.

After two days of agonized pondering and reflection, I finally
came to the conviction that I had to take this step.

It was the most decisive resolve of my life. From here there
was and could be no turning back.

And so I registered as a member of the German Workers’
Party and received a provisional membership card with the
number 7.

CHAPTER

X

Causes of the Collapse

T

X EE EXTENT of the fall of a body is always
measured by the distance between its momentary position and
the one it originally occupied. The same is true of nations and
states. A decisive significance must be ascribed to their previous
position or rather elevation. Only what is accustomed to rise
above the common limit can fall and crash to a manifest low.
This is what makes the collapse of the Reich so hard and terrible
for every thinking and feeling man, since it brought a crash from
heights which today, in view of the depths of our present degrada-
tion, are scarcely conceivable.

The very foimding of the Reich seemed gilded by the magic of
an event which uplifted the entire nation. After a series of in-
comparable victories, a Reich was born for the sons and grand-
sons — a reward for immortal heroism. Whether consciously or
unconsciously, it matters not, the Germans all had the feeling
that this Reich, which did not owe its existence to the trickery of
parliamentary fractions, towered above the measure of other
states by the very exalted manner of its founding; for not in the
cackling of a parliamentary battle of words, but in the thunder
and rumblin g of the front surrounding Paris was the solemn act
performed : a proclamation of our will, declaring that the Germans,
princes and people, were resolved in the future to constitute a
Reich and once again to raise the imperial crown to s3mibolic
heights. And this was not done by cowardly murder; no deserters

226

Mein Kampf

and slackers were the founders of the Bismarckian state, but the
regiments at the front.

This unique birth and baptism of fire in themselves surrounded
the Reich with a halo of historic glory such as only the oldest
states — and they but seldom — could boast.

And what an ascent now began!

Freedom on the outside provided daily bread within. The na-
tion became rich in numbers and earthly goods. The honor of the
state, and with it that of the whole people, was protected and
shielded by an army which could point most visibly to the differ-
ence from the former German Union.

So deep is the downfall of the Reich and the German people
that eveiyone, as though seized by dizziness, seems to have lost
feeling and consciousness; people can scarcely remember the
former height, so dreamlike and unreal do the old greatness and
gloiy seem compared to our present-day misery. Thus it is under-
standable that people are so blinded by the sublime that they
forget to look for the omens of the gigantic collapse which must
after all have been somehow present.

Of course, this applies only to those for whom Germany was
more than a mere stop-over for making and spending money,
since they alone can feel the present condition as a collapse, while
to the others it is the long-desired fulfillment of their hitherto
unsatisfied desires.

The omens were then present and visible, though but very few
attempted to draw a certain lesson from them.

Yet today this is more necessary than ever.

The cure of a sickness can only be achieved if its cause is known,
and the same is true of curing political evils. To be sure, the
outward form of a sickness, its s)nnptom which strikes the eye, is
easier to see and discover than the inner cause. And this is the
reason why so many people never go beyond the recognition of
external effects and even confuse them with the cause, attempt-
ing, indeed, to deny the existence of the latter. Thus most of us
primarily see the German collapse only in the general economic
misery and the consequences arising therefrom. Nearly every one

Causes oe the Collapse

227

of us must personally suffer these — a cogent ground for every
individual to understand the catastrophe. Much less does the
great mass see the collapse in its political, cultural, ethical, and
moral aspect. In this the feeling and understanding of many fail
completely.

That this should be so among the broad masses may stiU pass,
but for even the circles of the intelligentsia to regard the German
collapse as primarily an ‘economic catastrophe,’ which can there-
fore be cured by economic means, is one of the reasons why a
recovery has hitherto been impossible. Only when it is under-
stood that here, too, economics is only of second or third-rate
importance, and the primary r61e falls to factors of politics,
ethics, morality, and blood, will we arrive at an understanding of
the present calamity, and thus also be able to find the ways and
means for a cure.

The question of the causes of the German collapse is, therefore,
of decisive importance, particularly for a political movement
whose very goal is supposed to be to quell the defeat.

But, in such research into the past, we must be very careful not
to confuse the more conspicuous effects with the less visible
causes.

The easiest and hence most widespread explanation of the
present misfortune is that it was brought about by the conse-
quences of the lost War and that therefore the War is the cause
of the present evil.

There may be many who will seriously believe this nonsense,
but there are still more from whose mouth such an explanation
can only be a lie and conscious falsehood. This last applies to all
those who today feed at the government’s cribs. For didn’t the
prophets of the revolution again and again point out most ur-
gently to the people that it was a matter of complete indifference
to the broad masses how this War turned out? Did they not, on
the contrary, gravely assure us that at most the ‘big capitalist’
could have an interest in a victorious end of the gigantic struggle
of nations, but never the German people as such, let alone the
German worker? Indeed, didn’t these apostles of world concilia-

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Mein Kampf

tion maintain the exact opposite: didn’t they say that by a
German defeat ‘militarism’ would be destroyed, but that the
German nation would celebrate its most glorious resurrection?
Didn’t these circles glorify the benevolence of the Entente, and
didn’t they shove the blame for the whole bloody struggle on
Germany? And could they have done this without declaring that
even military defeat would be without special consequences for
the nation? Wasn’t the whole revolution embroidered with the
phrase that it would prevent the victory of the German flag, but
that through it the Gennan people would at last begin advancing
toward freedom at home and abroad?

WiU you claim that this was not so, you wretched, l3dng scoun-
drels?

It takes a truly Jewish effrontery to attribute the blame for the
collapse solely to the military defeat when the central organ of all
traitors to the nation, the Berlin Vomarts, wrote that this time
the German people must not bring its banner home victorious!

And now this is supposed to be the cause of our collapse?

Of course, it would be perfectly futile to fight with such forget-
ful liars. I wouldn’t waste my words on them if unfortunately
this nonsense were not parroted by so many thoughtless people,
who do not seem inspired by malice or conscious insincerity.
Furthermore, these discussions are intended to give our propa-
ganda fighters an instrument winch is very much needed at a
time when the spoken word is often twisted in our mouths.

Thus we have the following to say to the assertion that the lost
War is responsible for the German coUapse:

Certainly the loss of the War was of terrible importance for the
future of our fatherland; however, its loss is not a cause, but itself
only a consequence of causes. It was perfectly clear to everyone
with insight and without malice that an unfortunate end of this
struggle for life and death would inevitably lead to extremely
devastating consequences. But unfortimately there were also
people who seemed to lack this insight at the right time or who,
contrary to their better knowledge, contested and denied this
truth. Such for the most part were those who, after the fulfill-

The Guilty Parties

229

ment of their secret wish, suddenly and belatedly became aware
of the catastrophe which had been brought about by themselves
among others. They are guilty of the collapse — not the lost
War as it suddenly pleases them to say and believe. For its loss
was, after all, only the consequence of their activity and not, as
they now try to say, the result of ‘bad’ leadership. The foe did
not consist of cowards either; he, too, knew how to die. His num-
ber from the first day was greater than that of the German army,
for he could draw on the technical armament and the arsenals of
the whole world; hence the German victories, won for four years
against a whole world, must regardless of all heroic courage and
‘organization,’ be attributed solely to superior leadership, and
this is a fact which cannot be denied out of existence. The or-
ganization and leadership of the German army were the mightiest
that the earth had ever seen. Their deficiencies lay in the limits of
all human adequacy in general.

The collapse of this army was not the cause of our present-day
misfortune, but only the consequence of other crimes, a conse-
quence which itseh again, it must be admitted, ushered in the
beginning of a further and this time visible collapse.

The truth of this can be seen from the following:

Must a military defeat lead to so complete a collapse of a na-
tion and a state? Since when is this the result of an unfortunate
war? Do peoples perish in consequence of lost wars as such?

The answer to this can be very brief: always, when military
defeat is the payment meted out to peoples for their inner rotten-
ness, cowardice, lack of character, in short, unworthiness. If this
is not the case, the military defeat will rather be the inspiration
of a great future resurrection than the tombstone of a national
existence.

History offers innumerable examples for the truth of this
assertion.

Unfortunately, the military defeat of the German people is
not an undeserved catastrophe, but the deserved chastisement
of eternal retribution. We more than deserved this defeat. It is
only the greatest outward symptom of decay amid a whole series

230

Mkin Kampf

of inner symptoms, which perhaps had remained hidden and in-
visible to the eyes of most people, or which like ostriches people
did not want to see.

Just consider the attendant circumstances amid which the
German people accepted this defeat. Didn’t many circles express
the most shameless joy at the misfortune of the fatherland? And
who would do such a thing if he does not really deserve such a
punishment? Why, didn’t they go even further and brag of hav-
ing finally caused the front to waver? And it was not the enemy
that did this — no, no, it was Germans who poured such disgrace
upon their heads! Can it be said that misfortune struck them
unjustly? Since when do people step forward and take the guilt
for a war on themselves? And against better knowledge and
better judgment!

No, and again no. In the way in which the German people
received its defeat, we can recognize most clearly that the true
cause of our collapse must be sought in an entirely different place
from the purely military loss of a few positions or in the failure of
an offensive; for if the front as such had really flagged and if its
downfall had really encompassed the doom of the fatherland, the
German people would have received the defeat quite differently.
Then they would have borne the ensuing misfortune with gritted
teeth or would have mourned it, overpowered by grief; then all
hearts would have been filled with rage and anger toward the
enemy who had become victorious through a trick of chance or
the will of fate; then, like the Roman Senate, the nation would
have received the defeated divisions with the thanks of the
fatherland for the sacrifices they had made and besought them
not to despair of the Reich. The capitulation would have been
signed only with the reason, while the heart even then would have
beaten for the resurrection to come.

This is how a defeat for which only fate was responsible would
have been received. Then people would not have laughed and
danced, they would not have boasted of cowardice and glorified
the defeat, they would not have scoffed at the embattled troops
and dragged their banner and cockade in the mud. But above all:

Moral Disarmament of an Accuser

231

then we should never have had the terrible state of affairs which
prompted a British officer, Colonel Repington, to make the con-
temptuous statement: ‘Of the Germans, every third man is a
traitor.’ No, this plague would never have been able to rise into
the stifling flood which for five years now has been drowning the
very last remnant of respect for us on the part of the rest of the
world.

This most of all shows the assertion that the lost War was the
cause of the German collapse to be a lie. No, this military col-
lapse was itself only the consequence of a large number of symp-
toms of disease and their causes, which even in peacetime were
with the German nation. This was the first consequence, catas-
trophic and visible to all, of an ethical and moral poisoning, of a
diminution in the instinct of self-preservation and its precondi-
tions, which for many years had begun to undermine the founda-
tions of the people and the Reich.

It required the whole bottomless falsehood of the Jews and
their Marxist fighting organization to lay the blame for the col-
lapse on that very man who alone, with superhuman energy and
will power, tried to prevent the catastrophe he foresaw and save
the nation from its time of deepest humiliation and disgrace.
By branding Ludendorff as guilty for the loss of the World War,
they took the weapon of moral right from the one dangerous ac-
cuser who could have risen against the traitors to the fatherland.
In this they proceeded on the sound principle that the magnitude
of a lie always contains a certain factor of credibility, since the
great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend
to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposely evil, and
that, therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds,
they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since
they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies
that were too big. Such a falsehood will never enter their heads,
and they will not be able to believe in the possibility of such
monstrous effrontery and infamous misrepresentation in others;
yes, even when enlightened on the subject, they will long doubt
and waver, and continue to accept at least one of these causes as

232

Mein Kampe

true. Therefore, something of even the most insolent lie will al-
ways remain and stick — a fact which all the great lie-virtuosi
and lying-clubs in this world know only too well and also make
the most treacherous use of.

The foremost connoisseurs of this truth regarding the pos-
sibilities in the use of falsehood and slander have always been the
Jews; for after all, their whole existence is based on one single
great lie, to wit, that they are a religious community while
actually they are a race — and what a race ! One of the greatest
minds of humanity has nailed them forever as such in an eternally
correct phrase of fundamental truth: he called them ‘the great
masters of the lie.’ And anyone who does not recognize this or
does not want to believe it will never in this world be able to help
the truth to victory.

For the German people it must almost be considered a great
good fortune that its period of creeping sickness was suddenly
cut short by so terrible a catastrophe, for otherwise the nation
would have gone to the dogs more slowly perhaps, but all the
more certainly. The disease would have become chronic, while
in the acute form of the collapse it at least became clearly and
distinctly recognizable to a considerable number of people. It was
no accident that man mastered the plague more easily than tuber-
culosis. The one comes in terrible waves of death that shake hu-
manity to the foundations, the other slowly and stealthily; the
one leads to terrible fear, the other to gradual indifference. The
consequence is that man opposed the one with all the ruthlessness
of his energy, while he tries to control consumption with feeble
means. Thus he mastered the plague, while tuberculosis masters
him.

Exactly the same is true of diseases of national bodies. If they
do not take the form of catastrophe, man dowly begins to get
accustomed to them and at length, though it may take some
time, perishes all the more certainly of them. And so it is a good
fortune — though a bitter one, to be sure — when Fate resolves
to take a hand in this slow process of putrefaction and with a
sudden blow makes the victim visualize the end of his disease.

Toxins and Symptoms

233

For more than once, that is what such a catastrophe amounts to.
Then it can easily become the cause of a recovery beginning with
the utmost determination.

But even in such a case, the prerequisite is again the recognition
of the inner grounds which cause the disease in question.

Here, too, the most important thing remains the distinction
between the causes and the conditions they call forth. This will
be all the more difficult, the longer the toxins remain in the na-
tional body and the more they become an ingredient of it which
is taken for granted. For it is easily possible that after a certain
time unquestionably harmful poisons will be regarded as an in-
gredient of one’s own nation or at best will be tolerated as a neces-
sary evil, so that a search for the alien virus is no longer regarded
as necessary.

Thus, in the long peace of the pre-War years, certain harmful
features had appeared and been recognized as such, though next
to nothing was done against their virus, aside from a few excep-
tions. And here again these exceptions were primarily mani-
festations of economic life, which struck the consciousness of the
individual more strongly than the harmful features in a number
of other fields.

There were many symptoms of decay which should have
aroused serious reflection.

* * *

With respect to economics, the following should be said:

Through the a mazi n g increase in the German population be-
fore the War, the question of providing the necessary daily bread
stepped more and more sharply into the foreground of all political
and economic thought and action. Unfortunately, those in power
could not make up their minds to choose the only correct solution,
but thought they could reach their goal in an easier way. When
they renounced the acquisition of new soil and replaced it by the
lunacy of world economic conquest, the result was bound to be
an industrialization as boundless as it was harmful.

234

Mein Kasipf

The first consequence of gravest importance was the weakening
of the peasant class. Proportionately as the peasant class dimin-
ished, the mass of the big city proletariat increased more and
more, until finally the balance was completely upset.

Now the abrupt alternation ‘ between rich and poor became
really apparent. Abundance and poverty lived so close together
that the saddest consequences could and inevitably did arise.
Poverty and frequent unemployment began to play havoc with
people, leaving behind them a memory of discontent and embit-
terment. The consequence of this seemed to be political class
division. Despite all the economic prosperity, dissatisfaction
became greater and deeper; in fact, tilings came to such a pass
that the conviction that 'it can’t go on like this much longer’
became general, yet without people having or being able to have
any definite idea of what ought to have been done.

These were the typical symptoms of deep discontent which
sought to express themselves in this way.

But worse than this were other consequences induced by the
economization of the nation.

In proportion as economic life grew to be the dominant mistress
of the state, money became the god whom all had to serve and
to whom each man had to bow down. More and more, the gods
of heaven were put into the comer as obsolete and outmoded, and
in their stead incense was burned to the idol Mammon. A truly
malignant degeneration set in; what made it most malignant was
that it began at a time when the nation, in a presumably menac-
ing and critical hour, needed the highest heroic attitude. Ger-
many had to accustom herself to the idea that some day her at-
tempt to secure her daily bread by means of 'peaceful economic
labor’ would have to be defended by the sword.

Unfortunately, the domination of money was sanctioned even
by that authority which should have most opposed it: His Ma-
jesty the Kaiser acted most unfortunately by drawing the aris-
tocracy into the orbit of the new finance capital. It must be said
to his credit, however, that unfortunately even Bismarck himself

^ ‘der schrojfe Wecksel.’

Internationalization Through Finance 235

did not recognize the menacing danger in this respect. Thereby
the ideal virtues for all practical purposes had taken a position
second to the value of money, for it was clear that once a begin-
ning had been made in this direction, the aristocracy of the sword
would in a short time inevitably be overshadowed by the financial
aristocracy. Financial operations succeed more easily than
battles. It was no longer inviting for the real hero or statesman
to be brought into relations with some old bank Jew: the man of
true merit could no longer have an interest in the bestowal of
cheap decorations; he declined them with thanks. But regarded
purely from the standpoint of blood, such a development was
profoundly unfortunate: more and more, the nobility lost the
racial basis for its existence, and in large measure the designation
of ‘ignobility’ would have been more suitable for it.

A grave economic symptom of decay was the slow disappearance of
the right of private property, and the gradual transference of the entire
economy to the ownership of stock companies.

Now for the first time labor had sunk to the level of an object
of speculation for unscrupulous Jewish business men; the aliena-
tion of property from the wage-worker was increased ad infinitum.
The stock exchange began to triumph and prepared slowly but
surely to take the life of the nation into its guardianship and
control.

The internationalization of the German economic life had been
begun even before the War through the medium of stock issues.
To be sure, a part of German industry still attempted with resolu-
tion to ward off this fate. At length, however, it, too, feU a victim
to the united attack of greedy finance capital which carried on
this fight, with the special help of its most faithful comrade, the
Marxist movement.

The lastin g war against German ‘heavy industry’ was the
visible beginning of the internationalization of German economy
toward which Marxism was striving, though this could not be
carried to its ultimate end until the victory of Marxism and the
revolution. While I am writing these words, the general attack
against the German state railways has finally succeeded, and

236

Mein Kampf

they are now being handed over to international finance capital.^
‘International’ Social Democracy has thus realized one of its
highest goals.

How far this ‘economization’ of the German people had suc-
ceeded is most visible in the fact that after the War one of the
leading heads of German industry, and above all of commerce,
was finally able to express the opinion that economic effort as
such was alone in a position to re-establish Germany. This non-
sense was poured forth at a moment when France was primarily
bringing back the curriculum of her schools to humanistic founda-
tions in order to combat the error that the nation and the state
owed their survival to economics and not to eternal ideal values.
These words pronounced by a Stinnes created the most incredible
confusion; they were picked up at once, and with amazing rapid-
ity became the leitmotiv of all the quacks and big-mouths that
since the revolution Fate has let loose on Germany in the capacity
of ‘statesmen.’

* * *

One of the worst symptoms of decay in Germany of the pre-War
era was the steadily increasing habit of doing things by halves. This
is always a consequence of uncertainty on some matter and of the
cowardice resulting from this and other grounds. This disease
was further promoted by education.

' On April 16, 1924, the German government accepted the Dawes Plan
providing for reparations payments beginning at 1,000,000,000 marks an-
nually and increasing to 2,500,000,000 marks at the end of five years. It
provided for a reorganization of the Reichsbank under Allied supervision.

By the terms of the Plan, the German railway system had to pay 11,000,-
000,000 marks of the reparations debt, or, at 6 per cent, 660,000,000 marks
annually. The railways, which had been nationalized by the Republic, were
turned over to a private corporation with a capital of 26,000,000,000 marks.
Eleven billions of this capital was mortgaged to the Dawes Plan trustees.
Moreover, Allied representatives were placed on the administrative board
of the railways.

Gravediggers oe the Monarchy

237

German education before the War was afflicted with an ex-
traordinary number of weaknesses. It was extremely one-sided
and adapted to breeding pure ‘knowledge,’ with less attention to
‘ability.’ Even less emphasis was laid on the development of the
character of the individual — in so far as this is possible; exceed-
ingly little on the sense of joy in responsibility, and none at all on
the training of will and force of decision. Its results, you may be
sure, were not strong men, but compliant ‘walking encyclopedias,’
as we Germans were generally looked upon and accordingly esti-
mated before the War. People liked the German because he was
easy to make use of, but respected him little, precisely because of
his weakness of wiU. It was not for nothing that more than al-
most any other people he was prone to lose his nationality and
fatherland. The lovely proverb, ‘with hat in hand, he travels all
about the land,’ * tells the whole story.

This compliance became really disastrous, however, when it
determined the sole form in which the monarch could be ap-
proached; that is, never to contradict him, but agree to anything
and everything that His IMajesty condescends to do. Precisely in
this place was free, manly dignity most necessary; otherwise the
monarchic institution was one day bound to perish from all this
crawling; for crawling it was and nothing else! And only miser-
able crawlers and sneaks — in short, aU the decadents who have
always felt more at ease around the highest thrones than sincere,
decent, honorable souls — can regard this as the sole proper form
of intercourse with the bearers of the crown! These ‘most hum-
ble’ creatures, to be sure, despite aU their humility before their
master and source of livelihood, have always demonstrated the
greatest arrogance toward the rest of humanity, and worst of aU
when they pass themselves off with shameful effrontery on their
sinful feUow men as the only ‘monarchists’; this is real gall such
as only these ennobled or even unennobled tapeworms are capable
of! For in reality these people remained the gravediggers of the
monarchy and particularly the monarchistic idea. Nothing else
is conceivable: a man who is prepared to stand up for a cause will

* ‘Gefilgigkeit.’ In second edition, ‘Gcsellschaft’: society.

238

Mein Kampf

never and can never be a sneak and a spineless lickspittle. Any-
one who is really serious about the preservation and furtherance
of an institution will cling to it with the last fiber of his heart and
will not be able to abandon it if evils of some sort appear in this
institution. To be sure, he will not cry this out to the whole
public as the democratic ‘friends’ of the monarchy did in the
exact same lying way; he will most earnestly warn and attempt
to influence His Majesty, the bearer of the crown himself. He
win not and must not adopt the attitude that His Majesty re-
mains free to act according to his own will anyway, even if this
obviously must and will lead to a catastrophe, but in such a case
he will have to protect the monarchy against the monarch, and
this despite aU perils. If the value of this institution lay in the
momentary person of the monarch, it would be the worst institu-
tion that can be imagined; for monarchs only in the rarest cases
are the cream of wisdom and reason or even of character, as some
people like to claim. This is believed only by professional lick-
spittles and sneaks, but all straightforward men — and these re-
main the most valuable men in the state despite everything —
will only feel repelled by the idea of arguing such nonsense. For
them history remains history and the truth the truth even where
monarchs are concerned. No, the good fortune to possess a great
monarch who is also a great man falls to peoples so seldom that
they must be content if the malice of Fate abstains at least from
the worst possible mistakes.

Consequently, the value and importance of the monarchic
idea cannot reside in the person of the monarch himself except if
Heaven decides to lay the crown on the brow of a heroic genius
like Frederick the Great or a wise character like William I. This
happens once in centuries and hardly more often. Otherwise the
idea takes precedence over the person and the meaning of this
institution must lie exclusively in the institution itself. With this
the monarch himself falls into the sphere of service. Then he, too,
becomes a mere cog in this work, to which he is obligated as such.
Then he, too, must comply with a higher purpose, and the ‘mon-
archist is then no longer the man who in silence lets the bearer

‘Fighters’ for the Monarchy

239

of the crown profane it, but the man who prevents this. Other-
wise, it would not be permissible to depose an obviously insane
prince, if the sense of the institution lay not in the idea, but in the
‘sanctified’ person at any price.

Today it is really necessary to put this down, for in recent times
more and more of these creatures, to whose wretched attitude the
collapse of the monarchy must not least of aU be attributed are
rising out of obscurity. With a certain naive gall, these people
have started in again to speak of nothing but ‘their King’ —
whom only a few years ago they left in the lurch in the critical
hour and in the most despicable fashion — and are beginning to
represent every person who is not willing to agree to their lying
tirades as a bad German. And in reality they are the very same
poltroons who in 1919 scattered and ran from every red arm-
band, abandoned their King, in a twinkling exchanged the hal-
berd for the walking stick, put on noncommittal neckties, and
vanished without trace as peaceful ‘citizens.’ At one stroke they
were gone, these royal champions, and only after the revolution-
ary storm, thanks to the activity of others, had subsided enough
so that a man could again roar his ‘Hail, hail to the King’ into
the breezes, these ‘servants and counselors’ of the crown began
again cautiously to emerge. And now they are all here again,
looking back longingly to the fleshpots of Egypt; they can hardly
restrain themselves in their loyalty to the King and their urge to
do great things, until the day when again the first red arm-band
will appear, and the whole gang of ghosts profiting from the old
monarchy will again vanish like mice at the sight of a cat!

If the monarchs were not themselves to blame for these things,
they could be most heartily pitied because of their present de-
fenders. In any case, they might as well know that with such
knights a crown can be lost, but no crowns gained.

This servility, however, was a flaw in our whole education, for
which we suffered most terribly in this connection. For, as its
consequence, these wretched creatures were able to maintain
themselves at all the courts and gradually undermine the founda-
tions of the monarchy. And when the structure finally began to

240

Mein Kampf

totter, they evaporated. Naturally: cringers and lickspittles do
not let themselves be knocked dead for their master. That mon-
archs never know this and fail to learn it almost on principle has
from time immemorial been their undoing.^^

* * *

One of the worst symptoms of decay was the increasing cowardice
in the face of responsibility, as well as the resultant half-heartedness
in all things.

To be sure, the starting point of this plague in our country lies
in large part in the parliamentary institution in which irrespon-
sibility of the purest breed is cultivated. Unfortunately, this
plague slowly spread to all other domains of life, most strongly to
state life. Everjrwhere responsibility was evaded and inadequate
half-measures were preferred as a result; for in the use of such
measures personal responsibility seems reduced to the smallest
dimensions.

Just examine the attitude of the various governments toward
a number of truly injurious manifestations of our public life, and
you will easily recognize the terrible significance of this general
half-heartedness and cowardice in the face of responsibility.

I shall take only a few cases from the mass of existing ex-
amples:

Journalistic circles in particular like to describe the press as a
‘great power’ in the state. As a matter of fact, its importance
really is immense. It cannot be overestimated, for the press really
continues education in adulthood.

Its readers, by and large, can be divided into three groups:

First, into those who believe everything they read;

second, into those who have ceased to believe anything;

third, into the minds which critically examine what they read,
and judge accordingly.

Numerically, the first group is by far the largest. It consists
of the great mass of the people and consequently represents the

Three Groups of Newspaper Readers

241

simplest-minded part of the nation. It cannot be listed in terms
of professions, but at most in general degrees of intelligence. To
it belong all those who have neither been born nor trained to
think independently, and who partly from incapacity and partly
from incompetence believe everything that is set before them in
black and white. To them also belongs the t3^e of lazybones who
could perfectly well think, but from sheer mental laziness seizes
gratefully on everything that someone else has thought, with the
modest assumption that the someone else has exerted himself
considerably. Now, with all these types, who constitute the great
masses, the influence of the press will be enormous. They are not
able or willing themselves to examine what is set before them, and
as a result their whole attitude toward aU the problems of the
day can be reduced almost exclusively to the outside influence of
others. This can be advantageous when their enlightenment is
provided by a serious and truth-loving party, but it is cata-
strophic when scoundrels and liars provide it.

The second group is much smaller in number. It is partly com-
posed of elements which previously belonged to the first group,
but after long and bitter disappointments shifted to the opposite
and no longer believe anything that comes before their eyes in
print. They hate every newspaper; either they don’t read it at
all, or without exception fly into a rage over the contents, since in
their opinion they consist only of lies and falsehoods. These
people are very hard to handle, since they are suspicious even in
the face of the truth. Consequently, they are lost for all positive,
political work.

The third group, finally, is by far the smallest; it consists of the
minds with real mental subtlety, whom natural gifts and educa-
tion have taught to think independently, who try to form their
own judgment on all things, and who subject everything they
read to a thorough examination and further development of their
own. They will not look at a newspaper without always col-
laborating in their minds, and the writer has no easy time of it.
Journalists love such readers with the greatest reserve.

For the members of this third group, it must be admitted, the

242

Mein Kampe

nonsense that newspaper scribblers can pul down is not very
dangerous or even very important. Most of them in the course
of their lives have learned to regard every journalist as a rascal
on principle, who tells the truth only once in a blue moon. Un-
fortunately, however, the importance of these splendid people
lies only in their intelligence and not in their number — a mis-
fortune at a time when wisdom is nothing and the majority is
everything! Today, when the ballot of the masses decides, the
chief weight lies with the most numerous group, and this is the
first; the mob of the simple or credulous.

It is of paramount interest to the state and the nation to pre-
vent these people from f allin g into the hands of bad, ignorant, or
even vicious educators. The state, therefore, has the duty of
watching over their education and preventing any mischief. It
must particularly exercise strict control over the press; for its
influence on these people is by far the strongest and most pene-
trating, since it is applied, not once in a while, but over and over
again. In the uniformity and constant repetition of this instruc-
tion lies its tremendous power. If an3nvhere, therefore, it is here
that the state must not forget that all means must serve an end;
it must not let itself be confused by the drivel about so-called
‘freedom of the press’ and let itself be talked into neglecting its
duty and denying the nation the food which it needs and which is
good for it; with ruthless determination it must make sure of this
instrument of popular education, and place it in the service of
the state and the nation.

But what food did the German press of the pre-War period dish
out to the people? Was it not the worst poison that can even be
imagined? Wasn’t the worst kind of pacifism injected into the
heart of our people at a time when the rest of the world was pre-
paring to throttle Germany, slowly but surely? Even in peace-
time didn’t the press inspire the minds of the people with doubt
in the right of their own state, thus from the outset limiting them
in the choice of means for its defense? Was it not the German
press which knew how to make the absurdity of ‘Western de-
mocracy’ palatable to our people until finally, ensnared by all

State and Press

243

the enthusiastic tirades, they thought they could entrust their
future to a League of Nations? Did it not help to teach our people
a miserable immorality? Did it not ridicule morality and ethics
as backward and petty-bourgeois, until our people finally became
‘modern’? Did it not with its constant attacks undermine the
foundations of the state’s authority until a single thrust sufficed
to make the edifice collapse? Did it not fight with all possible
means against every effort to give unto the state that which is the
state’s? Did it not belittle the army with constant criticism,
sabotage universal conscription, demand the refusal of military
credits, etc., until the result became inevitable?

The so-called liberal press was actively engaged in digging the
grave of the German people and the German Reich. We can pass
by the lying Marxist sheets in silence; to them lying is just as
vitally necessary as catching mice for a cat; their function is only
to break the people’s national and patriotic backbone and make
them ripe for the slave’s yoke of international capital and its
masters, the Jews.

And what did the state do against this mass poisoning of the
nation? Nothing, absolutely nothing. A few ridiculous decrees,
a few fines for villainy that went too far, and that was the end of
it. Instead, they hoped to curry favor with this plague by flattery,
by recognition of the ‘value’ of the press, its ‘importance,’ its
‘educational mission,’ and more such nonsense — as for the Jews,
they took all this with a crafty smile and acknowledged it with
sly thanks.

The reason, however, for this disgraceful. failure on the part
of the state was not that it did not recognize the danger, but
rather in a cowardice crying to high Heaven and the resultant
half-heartedness of all decisions and measures. No one had the
courage to use thoroughgoing radical methods, but in this as in
everything else they tinkered about with a lot of halfway pre-
scriptions, and instead of carrying the thrust to the heart, they at
most irritated the viper — with the result that not only did every-
thing remain as before, but on the contrary the power of the in-
stitutions which should have been combated increased from year
to year.

244

Mein Kampf

iTie defensive struggle of the German government at that time
against the press — mainly that of Jewish origin — which was
slowly ruining the nation was without any straight line, irresolute
and above all without any visible goal. The intelligence of the
privy councilors failed completely when it came to estimating
the importance of this struggle, to choosing means or drawing up
a clear plan. Planlessly they fiddled about; sometimes, after be-
ing bitten too badly, they locked up one of the journalistic vipers
for a few weeks or months, but they left the snakes’ nest as such
perfectly unmolested.

True — this resulted partly from the infinitely wily tactics of
the Jews, on the one hand, and from a stupidity and innocence
such as only privy councilors are capable of, on the other. The
Jew was much too clever to allow his entire press to be attacked
uniformly. No, one part of it existed in order to cover the other.
While the Marxist papers assailed in the most dastardly way
everything that can be holy to man; while they infamously at-
tacked the state and the government and stirred up large sections
of the people against one another, the bourgeois-democratic
papers knew how to give an appearance of their famous ob-
jectivity, painstakingly avoided all strong words, well knowing
that empty heads can judge only by externals and never have the
faculty of penetrating the inner core, so that for them the value
of a thing is measured by this exterior instead of by the content;
a human weakness to which they owe what esteem they them-
selves enjoy.

For these people the Frankfurter Zeilung was the embodiment
of respectability. For it never uses coarse expressions, it rejects
all physical brutality and keeps appealing for struggle with ‘in-
tellectual’ weapons, a conception, strange to say, to which espe-
cially the least intelligent people are most attached. This is a
result of our half-education which removes people from the in-
stinct of Nature and pumps a certain amount of knowledge into
them, but cannot create full understanding, since for this in-
dustry and good wiU alone are no use; the necessary intelligence
must be present, and what is more, it must be inborn. The ulti-

The Respectable Press

245

mate wisdom is always the understanding of the instinct ^ — that
is: a man must never fall into the lunacy of believing that he has
really risen to be lord and master of Nature — which is so easily
induced by the conceit of half-education; he must understand the
fundamental necessity of Nature’s rule, and realize how much his
existence is subjected to these laws of eternal fight and upward
struggle. Then he will feel that in a universe where planets re-
volve around suns, and moons turn about planets, where force
alone forever masters weakness, compelling it to be an obedient
slave or else crushing it, there can be no special laws for man. For
him, too, the eternal principles of this ultimate wisdom hold sway.
He can try to comprehend them; but escape them, never.

And it is precisely for our intellectual demi-monde that the Jew
writes his so-called intellectual press. For them the Frankfurter
Zeitung and the Berliner TageUatt are made; for them their tone
is chosen, and on them they exercise their influence. Seemingly
they all most sedulously avoid any outwardly crude forms, and
meanwhile from other vessels they nevertheless pour their poison
into the hearts of their readers. Amid a Gezeires “ of fine sounds
and phrases they lull their readers into believing that pure science
or even morality is really the motive of their acts, while in reality
it is nothing but a wily, ingenious trick for stealing the enemy’s
weapon against the press from under his nose. The one variety
oozes respectability, so all soft-heads are ready to believe them
when they say that the faults of others are only trivial abuses,
which should never lead to an infringement of the ‘freedom of
the press’ — their term for poisoning and lying to the people.
And so the authorities shy away from taking measures against
these bandits, for they fear that, if they did, they would at once
have the ‘ respectable ’ press against them, a fear which is only too
justified. For as soon as they attempt to proceed against one of
these shameful rags, all the others will at once take its part, but

^ ‘das Verstehen des Instinktes.’ Second edition has: ‘ ...der Imtinklur-
sachen’i of the instinctive causes.

® Gezeires: Yiddish, meaning arbitrary decrees. What Hitler thinks it
means is not clear.

246

Mein Kampf

by no means to sanction its mode of struggle, God forbid! — but
only to defend the principle of freedom of the press and freedom
of public opinion; these alone must be defended. But in the face
of aU this shouting, the strongest men grow weak, for does it not
issue from the mouths of ‘respectable’ papers?

This poison was able to penetrate the bloodstream of our people
unhindered and do its work, and the state did not possess the
power to master the disease. In the laughable half-measures
which it used against the poison, the menacing decay of the Reich
was manifest. For an insfilulion which is no longer resolved to de-
fend itself with all weapons has for practical purposes abdicated.
Every half-measure is a visible sign of inner decay which must and
will be followed sooner or later by outward collapse.

I believe that the present generation, properly led, will more
easily master this danger. It has experienced various things which
had the power somewhat to strengthen the nerves of those who
did not lose them entirely. In future days the Jew will certainly
continue to raise a mighty uproar in his newspapers if a hand is
ever laid on his favorite nest, if an end is put to the mischief of
the press and this instrument of education is put into the service
of the state and no longer left in the hands of aliens and enemies
of the people. But I believe that this will bother us younger men
less than our fathers. A thirty-centimeter shell has always hissed
more loudly than a thousand Jewish newspaper vipers — so let
them hiss!

• • *

A further example of the half-heartedness and weakness of the
leaders of pre-War Germany in meeting the most important vital
questions of the nation is the following: running parallel to the
political, ethical, and moral contamination of the people, there
had been for many years a no less terrible poisoning of the health
of the national body. Especially in the big cities, s)q)hilis was
beginning to spread more and more, while tuberculosis steadily

Syphilis

247

reaped its harvest of death throughout nearly the whole country.

Though in both cases the consequences were terrible for the
nation, the authorities could not summon up the energy to take
decisive measures.

Particularly with regard to syphilis, the attitude of the leader-
ship of the nation and the state can only be designated as total
capitulation. To fight it seriously, they would have had to take
somewhat broader measures than was actually the case. The
invention of a remedy of questionable character and its com-
mercial exploitation can no longer help much against this plague.
Here again it was only the fight against causes that mattered and
not the elimination of the symptoms. The cause lies, primarily,
in our prostitution of love. Even if its result were not this fright-
ful plague, it would nevertheless be profoundly injurious to man,
since the moral devastations which accompany this degeneracy
suflice to destroy a people slowly but surely. This Jewification of
our spiritual life and mammonization of our mating instinct will
sooner or later destroy our entire offspring, for the powerful
children of a natural emotion will be replaced by the miserable
creatures of financial expediency which is becoming more and
more the basis and sole prerequisite of our marriages. Love finds
its outlet elsewhere.

Here, too, of course. Nature can be scorned for a certain time,
but her vengeance wiU not fail to appear, only it takes a time to
manifest itself, or rather: it is often recognized too late by man.

But the devastating consequences of a lasting disregard of the
natural requirements for marriage can be seen in our nobility.
Here we have before us the results of procreation based partly on
purely social compulsion and partly on financi al grounds. The
one leads to a general weakening, the other to a poisoning of the
blood, since every department store Jewess is considered fit to
augment the offspring of His Highness — and, indeed, the off-
spring look it. In both cases complete degeneration is the con-
sequence.

Today our bourgeoisie strive to go the same road, and they
wiU end up at the same goal.

248

Mein Kampe

Hastily and indififerently, people tried to pass by the unpleasant
truths, as though by such an attitude events could be undone.
No, the fact that our big city population is growing more and
more prostituted in its love life cannot just be denied out of ex-
istence; it sim ply is so. The most visible results of this mass con-
tamination can, on the one hand, be found in the insane asylums,
and on the other, unfortunately, in our — children. They in
particular are the sad product of the irresistibly spreading con-
tamination of our sexual life; the vices of the parents are revealed
in the sicknesses of the children.

There are difEerent ways of reconciling oneself to this im-
pleasant, yes, terrible fact: the ones see nothing at all or rather
want to see nothing; this, of course, is by far the simplest and
easiest ‘position.’ The others wrap themselves in a saint’s cloak
of prudishness as absurd as it is hypocritical; they speak of this
whole field as if it were a great sin, and above all express their
profound indignation against every sinner caught in the act, then
dose their eyes in pious horror to this godless plague and pray
God to let sulphur and brimstone — preferably after their own
death — rain down on this whole Sodom and Gomorrah, thus
once again making an instructive example of this shameless hu-
manity. The third, finally, are perfectly well aware of the ter-
rible consequences which this plague must and wiU some day
induce, but only shrug their shoulders, convinced that nothing
can be done against the menace, so the onlyiliing to do is to let
things slide.

All this, to be sure, is comfortable and simple, but it must not
be forgotten that a nation will fall victim to such comfortableness.
The excuse that other peoples are no better off, it goes without
saying, can scarcely affect the fact of our own ruin, except that
the feeling of seeing others stricken by the same calamity might
for many bring a mitigation of their own pains. But then more
than ever the question becomes: Which people will be the first and
only one to master this plague by its own strength, and which
nations will perish from it? And this is the crux of the whole mat-
ter. Here again we have a touchstone of a race’s value — the race

Blood Sin and Desecration of the Race

249

which cannot stand the test will simply die out, making place for
healthier or tougher and more resisting races. For since this ques-
tion primarily regards the offspring, it is one of those concerning
which it is said with such terrible justice that the sins of the
fathers are avenged down to the tenth generation. But this ap-
plies only to profanation of the blood and the race.

Blood sin and desecration of the race are the original sin in this
world and the end of a humanity which surrenders to it.

How truly wretched was the attitude of pre-War Germany on
this one very question! What was done to check the contamina-
tion of our youth in the big cities? What was done to attack the
infection and mammonization of our love life? What was done
to combat the resulting syphilization of our people?

This can be answered most easily by stating what should have
been done.

First of all, it was not permissible to take this question friv-
olously; it had to be understood that the fortune or misfortune
of generations would depend on its solution; yes, that it could, if
not had to be, decisive for the entire future of our people. Such a
realization, however, obligated us to ruthless measures and
surgical operations. What we needed most was the conviction
that first of all the whole attention of the nation had to be con-
centrated upon this terrible danger, so that every single individual
could become inwardly conscious of the importance of this strug-
gle. Truly incisive^d sometimes almost unbearable obligations
and burdens can only be made generally effective if, in addition
to compulsion, the realization of necessity is transmitted to the
individual. But this requires a tremendous enlightenment ex-
cluding all other problems of the day which might have a dis-
tracting effect.

In all cases where the fulfillment of apparently impossible de-
mands or tasks is involved, the whole attention of a people must he
focused and concentrated on this one question, as though life and
death actually depended on its solution. Only in this way will a
people be made willing and able to perform great tasks and
exertions.

250

Mein Kampe

This principle applies also to the individual man in so far as
he wants to achieve great goals. He, too, will be able to do this
only in steplike sections, and he, too, will always have to unite
his entire energies on the achievement of a definitely delimited
task, until this task seems fulfilled and a new section can be
marked out. Anyone who does not so divide the road to be con-
quered into separate stages and does not try to conquer these one
by one, systematically with the sliarpest concentration of all his
forces, will never be able to reach the ultimate goal, but will be
left lying somewhere along the road, or perhaps even off it. This
gradual working up to a goal is an art, and to conquer the road
step by step in this way you must throw in your last ounce of energy.

The very first prerequisite needed for attacking such a difficult
stretch of the human road is for the leadership to succeed in
representing to the masses of the people the partial goal which
now has to be achieved, or rather conquered, as the one which is
solely and alone worthy of attention, on whose conquest every-
thing depends. The great mass of the people cannot see the whole
road ahead of them without growing weary and despairing of the
task. A certain number of them will keep the goal in mind, but
will only be able to see the road in small, partial stretches, lilce
the wanderer, who likewise knows and recognizes the end of his
Journey, but is better able to conquer the endless highway if he
divides it into sections and boldly attacks each one as though it
represented the desired goal itself. Only in this way does he ad-
vance without losing heart.

Thus, by the use of all propagandist means, the question of
combating syphilis should have been made to appear as the task
of the nation. Not just one more task. To this end, its injurious
effects should have been thoroughly hammered into people as
the most terrible misfortune, and this by the use of all available
means, until the entire nation arrived at the conviction that
everything future or ruin — depended upon the solution of
this question.

Only after such a preparation, if necessary over a period of
years, will the attention, and consequently the determination, of

The Task of Combating Syphilis

251

the entire nation be aroused to such an extent that we can take
exceedingly hard measures exacting the greatest sacrifices with-
out running the risk of not being understood or of suddenly being
left in the lurch by the will of the masses.

For, seriously to attack this plague, tremendous sacrifices and
equally great labors are necessary.

The fight against syphilis demands a fight against prostitution,
against prejudices, old habits, against previous conceptions, gen-
eral views among them not least the false prudery of certain
circles.

The first prerequisite for even the moral right to combat these
things is the facilitation of earlier marriage for the coming gen-
eration. In late marriage alone lies the compulsion to retain an
institution which, twist and turn as you like, is and remains a
disgrace to humanity, an institution which is damned ill-suited
to a being who with his usual modesty likes to regard himself as
the ‘image’ of God.

Prostitution is a disgrace to humanity, but it cannot be elim-
inated by moral lectures, pious intentions, etc. ; its limitation and
final abolition presuppose the elimination of innumerable pre-
conditions. The first is and remains the creation of an oppor-
tunity for early marriage as compatible with human nature —
particularly for the man, as the woman in any case is only the
passive part.

How lost, how incomprehensible a part of humanity has be-
come today can be seen from the fact that mothers in so-called
‘good’ society can not seldom be heard to say that they are glad
to have found their child a husband who has sown his wild oats,
etc. Since there is hardly any lack of these, but rather the con-
trary, the poor girl will be happy to find one of these worn-out
Siegfrieds,^ and the children will be the visible result of this

^ The Gemiaii here has an untranslatable and rather elaborate pun.
To sow wild oats is ‘sich die Horner abstossen,' to butt off one’s horns.
The word I have rendered as ‘wom-out ’ is enthortU, literally de-homed.
Siegfried did not have horns, the reference is to the homy skin which
made him invulnerable.

252

Mein Kampf

‘sensible’ marriage. If we bear in mind that, aside from this,
propagation as such is limited as much as possible, so that Nature
is prevented from making any choice, since naturally every
creature, regardless how miserable, must be preserved, the only
question that remains is why such an institution exists at all any
more and what purpose it is supposed to serve? Isn’t it exactly
the same as prostitution itself? Hasn’t duty toward posterity
passed completely out of the picture? Or do people fail to realize
what a curse on the part of their children and children’s children
they are heaping on themselves by such criminal frivolity in
observing the ultimate natural law as well as our ultimate natural
obligation? ^

Thus, the civilized peoples degenerate and gradually perish.

And marriage cannot be an end in itself, but must serve the
one higher goal, the increase and preservation of the species and
the race. This alone is its meaning and its task.

Under these conditions its soundness can only be judged by the
way in which it fulfills this task. For this reason alone early mar-
riage is sound, for it gives the young marriage that strength from
which alone a healthy and resistant offspring can arise. To be
sure, it can be made possible only by quite a number of social
conditions without which early marriage is not even thinkable.
Therefore, a solution of this question, small as it is, cannot occur
without incisive measures of a social sort. The importance of
these should be most understandable at a time when the ‘social’
republic, if only by its incompetence in the solution of the housing
question, simply prevents numerous marriages and thus en-
courages prostitution.

Our absurd way of regulating salaries, which concerns itself
much too little with the question of the family and its sustenance,
is one more reason that makes many an early marriage im-
possible.

Thus, a real fight against prostitution can only be undertaken
if a basic change in social conditions makes possible an earlier

^ ‘. . . i» der Wahrung des lelsten Nalurrechies, aber attch der letzlen Natur-
verpjlichtung? ’

Sound Mind — Sound Body

253

marriage than at present can generally take place. This is the
very first premise for a solution of this question.

In the second place, education and training must eradicate a
number of evils about which today no one bothers at all. Above
all, in our present education a balance must be created between
mental instruction and physical training. The institution that is
called a Gymnasium today is a mockery of the Greek model. In
our educational system it has been utterly forgotten that in the
long run a healthy mind can dwell only in a healthy body. Espe-
cially if we bear in mind the mass of the people, aside from a few
exceptions, this statement becomes absolutely valid.

In pre-War Germany there was a period in which no one con-
cerned himself in the least about this truth. They simply went
on sinning against the body and thought that in the one-sided
training of the ‘mind,’ they possessed a sure guaranty for the
greatness of the nation. A mistake whose consequences began to
be felt sooner than was expected. It is no accident that the Bol-
shevistic wave never found better soil than in places inhabited
by a population degenerated by hunger and constant under-
nourishment: in Central Germany, Saxony, and the Ruhr.- But in
all these districts the so-caUed intelligentsia no longer offers any
serious resistance to this Jewish disease, for the simple reason that
this intelligentsia is itself completely degenerate physically,
though less for reasons of poverty than for reasons of education.
In times when not the mind but the fist decides, the purely intel-
lectual emphasis of our education in the upper classes makes them
incapable of defending themselves, let alone enforcing their -will.
Not infrequently the first reason for personal cowardice lies in
'physical weaknesses.

The excessive emphasis on purely intellectual instruction and
the neglect of physical training also encourage the emergence of
sexual ideas at a much too early age. The youth who achieves
the hardness of iron by sports and gymnastics succumbs to the
need of sexual satisfaction less than the stay-at-home fed ex-
clusively on intellectual fare. And a sensible system of education
must bear this in mind. It must, moreover, not fail to consider j

254

Mein Kampe

that the healthy young man will expect different things from the
woman than a prematurely corrupted weakling.

Thus, the whole system of education must be so organized as
to use the boy’s free time for the useful training of his body. He
has no right to hang about in idleness during these years, to mglrp
the streets and movie-houses unsafe; after his day’s work he
should steel and harden his young body, so that later life will not
find him too soft. To begin this and also carry it out, to direct
and guide it, is the task of education, and not just the prunping
of so-called wisdom. We must also do away with the conception
that the treatment of the body is the affair of every individual.
There is no freedom to sin at the cost of posterity and hence of
the race.

Parallel to the training of the body, a struggle against the poi-
soning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like
a hothouse for sexual ideas and stimulations. Just look at the bill
of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you
will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food,
particularly for the youth. In shop windows and billboards the
vilest means are used to attract the attention of the crowd.
Anyone who has not lost the ability to think himself into their
soul must realize that this must cause great damage in the youth.
This sensual, sultry atmosphere leads to ideas and stimulations at
a time when the boy should have no understanding of such things.
The result of this kind of education can be studied in present-day
youth, and it is not exactly gratifying. They mature too early and
consequently grow old before their time. Sometimes the public
learns of court proceedings which permit shattering insights into
the emotional life of our fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds. Who
will be surprised that even in these age-groups syphilis begins to
seek its victims? And is it not deplorable to see a good number of
these physically weak, spiritually corrupted young men obtaining
their introduction to marriage through big-city whores?

No, anyone who wants to attack prostitution must first of all
help to eliminate its spiritual basis. He must dear away the filth
of the moral plague of big-dty ‘civilization’ and he must do this

Sterilization of Incurables

255

ruthlessly and mthout wavering in the face of all the shouting
and screaming that will naturally be let loose. If we do not lift
the youth out of the morass of their present-day environment,
they wiU drown in it. Anyone who refuses to see these things sup-
ports them, and thereby makes himself an accomplice in the slow
prostitution of our future which, whether we like it or not, lies
in the coming generation. This deansing of our culture must be
extended to nearly all fields. Theater, art, literature, cinema,
press, posters, and window displays must be deansed of all mani-
festations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral,
political, and cultural idea. Public life must be freed from the
stifling perfume of our modem erotidsm, just as it must be freed
from all unma nly, prudish hypocrisy. In all these things the goal
and the road must be determined by concern for the preservation
of the health of our people in body and soul. The right of per-
sonal freedom recedes before the duty to preserve the race.

Only after these measures are carried out can the medical strug-
^e against the plague itself be carried through with any prospect
of success. But here, too, there must be no half-measures; the
gravest and most ruthless dedsions will have to be made. It is a
half-measure to let incurably sick people steadily contaminate
the r emaining healthy ones. This is in keeping with the humani-
ta rianism which, to avoid hurting one individual, lets a himdred
others perish. The demand that defective people be prevented
from propagating equally defective offspring is a demand of the
dearest reason and if systematically executed represents the
most humane act of mankind. It will spare millions of unfortu-
nates undeserved sufferings, and consequently will lead to a rising
improvement of health as a whole. The determination to proceed
in this direction will oppose a dam to the further spread of vene-
real diseases. For, if necessary, the incmrably sick will be pitilessly
segregated — a barbaric measure for the unfortunate who is
struck by it, but a blessing for his fdlow men and posterity. The
passing pain of a century can and will redeem millenniums from
sufferings.

The struggle against s3q>hiUs and the prostitution whidi pre-

256

Mein Kampf

pares the way for it is one of the most gigantic tasks of humanity,
gigantic because we are facing, not the solution of a single ques-
tion, but the elimination of a large number of evils which bring
about this plague as a resultant manifestation. For in this case
the sickening of the body is only the consequence of a sickening of
the moral, social, and racial instincts.

But if out of smugness, or even cowardice, this battle is not
fought to its end, then take a look at the peoples five hundred
years from now. I think you will find but few images of God, un-
less you want to profane the Almighty.

But how did they try to deal with this plague in old Germany?
Viewed calmly, the answer is really dismal. Assuredly, govern-
ment circles well recognized the terrible evils, though perhaps
they were not quite able to ponder the consequences; but in the
struggle against it they failed totally, and instead of thorough-
going reforms preferred to take pitiful measures. They tinkered
with the disease and left the causes untouched. They submitted
the individual prostitute to a medical examination, supervised
her as best they could, and, in case they established disease, put
her in some hospital from which after a superficial cure they again
let her loose on the rest of humanity.

To be sure, they had introduced a ‘protective paragraph’ ac-
cording to which anyone who was not entirely healthy or cured
must avoid sexual intercourse under penalty of the law. Surely
this measure is sound in itself, but in its practical application it
was almost a total failure. In the first place, the woman, in case
she is smitten by misfortune — if only due to our, or rather her,
education — will in most cases refuse to be dragged into court as
a witness against the wretched thief of her health — often under
the most embarrassing attendant circumstances. She, in particu-
lar, has little to gain from it; in most cases she will be the one to
suffer most — for she will be struck much harder by the contempt
of her loveless fellow creatures than would be the case with a man.
Finally, imagine the situation if the conveyor of the disease is her
own husband. Should she accuse him? Orwhat else should she do?

In the case of the man, there is the additional fact that un-

Prostitution of the People’s Soul

257

fortunately he often runs across the path of this plague after
ample consumption of alcohol, since in this condition he is least
able to judge the qualities of his ‘fair one,’ a fact which is only too
well known to the diseased prostitute, and always causes her to
angle after men in this ideal condition. And the upshot of it aU
is that the man who gets an unpleasant surprise later can, even
by thoroughly racking his brains, not remember his kind bene-
factress, which should not be surprising in a city like Berlin or
even Munich. In addition, it must be considered that often we
have to deal with visitors from the provinces who are completely
befuddled by all the magic of the big city.

Finally, however: who can know whether he is sick or healthy?
Are there not numerous cases in which a patient apparently cured
relapses and causes frightful mischief without himself suspecting
it at first?

Thus, the practical effect of this protection by legal punish-
ment of a guilty infection is in reality practically nil. Exactly the
same is true of the supervision of prostitutes; and finally, the
cure itself, even today, is dubious. Only one thing is certain:
despite all measures the plague spread more and more, giving
striking confirmation of their ineffectuahiess.

The fight against the prostitution of the people’s soul was a
failure all along the line, or rather, that is, nothing at aU was done.

Let anyone who is inclined to take this lightly just study the
basic statistical facts on the dissemination of this plague, compare
its growth in the leist hundred years, and then imagine its further
development — and he w'ould really need the simplicity of an ass
to keep an unpleasant shudder from running dowm his back.

The weakness and half-heartedness of the position taken in old
Germany toward so terrible a phenomenon may be evaluated as
a visible sign of a people’s decay. If the power to fight for one's own
health is no longer present, the right to live in this world of struggle
ends. This world belongs only to the forceful ‘whole’ man and
not to the weak ‘half’ msin.

One of the most obvious manifestations of decay in the old
Reich was the slow decline of the cultural level, and by culture I

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do not mean what today is designated by the word ‘civilization.’
The latter, on the contrary, rather seems hostile to a truly high
standard of thinking and living.

Even before the turn of the century an element began to in-
trude into our art which up to that time could he regarded as
entirely foreign and unknown. To be sure, even in earlier times
there were occasional aberrations of taste, but such cases were
rather artistic derailments, to which posterity could attribute at
least a certain historical value, than products no longer of an
artistic degeneration, but of a spiritual degeneration that had
reached the point of destroying the spirit. In them the political
collapse, which later became more visible, was culturally in-
dicated.

Art Bolshevism is the only possible cultmral form and spiritual
expression of Bolshevism as a whole.

Anyone to whom this seems strange need only subject the art
of the happily Bolshevized states to an examination, and, to his
horror, he will be confronted by the morbid excrescences of in-
sane and degenerate men, with which, since the turn of the cen-
tury, we have become familiar xmder the collective concepts of
cubism and dadaism, as the official and recognized art of those
states. Even in the short period of the Bavarian Republic of
Councils, this phenomenon appeared. Even here it could be
seen that aU the official posters, propagandist drawings in the
newspapers, etc., bore the imprint, not only of political but of
cultural decay.

No more than a political collapse of the present magnitude
would have been conceivable sixty years ago was a cultural col-
lapse such as began to manifest itself in futurist and cubist works
since 1900 thinkable. Sixty years ago an exhibition of so-called
dadaistic ‘experiences’ would have seemed simply impossible and
its organizers would have ended up in the madhouse, while today
they even preside over art associations. This plague could not
appear at that time, because neither would public opinion have
tolerated it nor the state calmly looked on. For it is the business
of the state, in other words, of its leaders, to prevent a people

Decline op the Theater

2S9

from being driven into the arms of spiritual madness. And this
is where such a development would some day inevitably end.
For on the day when this type of art really corresponded to the
general view of things, one of the gravest transformations of
humanity would have occurred: the regressive development of
the human mind would have begun and the end would be scarcely
conceivable.

Once we pass the development of our cultural life in the last
twenty-five years in review from this standpoint, we shall be hor-
rified to see how far we are already engaged in this regression.
Everywhere we encounter seeds which represent the beginnings
of parasitic growths which must sooner or later be the ruin of
our culture. In them, too, we can recognize the symptoms of
decay of a slowly rotting world. Woe to the peoples who can no
longer master this disease!

Such diseases could be seen in Germany in nearly every field of
art and culture. Everything seemed to have passed the high
point and to be hastening toward the abyss. The theater was
sinki ng manifestly lower and even then would have disappeared
completely as a cultural factor if the Court Theaters at least had
not turned against the prostitution of art. If we disregard them
and a few other praiseworthy examples, the offerings of the stage
were of such a nature that it would have been more profitable for
the nation to keep away from them entirely. It was a sad sign of
inner decay that the youth could no longer be sent into most of
these so-called ‘abodes of art’ — a fact which was admitted with
shameless frankness by a general display of the penny-arcade
warning: ‘Young people are not admitted!’

Bear in mind that such precautionary measures had to be taken
in the places which should have existed primarily for the educa-
tion of the youth and not for the delectation of old and jaded
sections of the population. What would the great dramatists of
all times have said to such a regulation, and what, above all, to the
circumstances which caused it? How Schiller would have flared
up, how Goethe would have turned away in indignation!

But after all, what are Schiller, Goethe, or Shakespeare corn-

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Mein Kampf

pared to tte heroes of the newer German poetic art? Old, out-
worn, outmoded, nay, obsolete. For that was the characteristic
thing about that period: not that the period itself produced
nothing but filth, but that in the bargain it befouled everything
that was really great in the past. This, to be sure, is a phenome-
non that can always be observed at such times. The baser and
more contemptible the products of the time and its people, the
more it hates the witnesses to the greater nobility and dignity of
a former day. In such times the people would best like to efface
the memory of mankind’s past completely, so that by excluding
every possibility of comparison they could pass off their own
trash as ‘art.’ Hence every new institution, the more wretched
and miserable it is, will try all the harder to extinguish the last
traces of the past time, whereas every true renascence of human-
ity can start with an easy mind from the good achievements of
past generations; in fact, can often make them truly appreciated
for the first time. It does not have to fear that it will pale before
the past; no, of itself it contributes so valuable an addition to the
general store of human culture that often, in order to make this
culture fully appreciated, it strives to keep alive the memory of
former achievements, thus making sure that the present will fully
understand the new gift. Only those who can give nothing val-
uable to the world, but try to act as if they were going to give it
God knows what, will hate everytUng that was previously given
and would best like to negate or even destroy it.

The truth of this is by no means limited to the field of general
culture, but applies to politics as well. Revolutionary new move-
ments will hate the old forms in proportion to their own inferi-
ority. Here, too, we can see how eagerness to make their own
trash appear to be something noteworthy leads to blind hatred
against the superior good of the past. As long, for example, as
the historical memory of Frederick the Great is not dead, Fried-
rich Ebert can arouse nothing but limited amazement. The
hero of Sans-Souci is to the former Bremen saloon keeper ^ ap-

* Before going into politics, Ebert was a saddle-maker. The source of
the legend about his being a tavern-keeper is that, as secretary of his trade
^ union in Bremen, he helped to administer the union’s restaurant and bar.

Spiritual Preparation por Bolshevism

261

proximately as the sun to the moon; only when the rays of the
sun die can the moon shine. Consequently, the hatred of all new
moons of humanity for the fixed stars is only too comprehensible.
In political life, such nonentities, if Fate temporarily casts power
in their lap, not only besmirch and befoul the past with untiring
zeal, but also remove themselves from general criticism by the
most extreme methods. The new German Reich’s legislation for
the defense of the Republic may pass as an example of this.

Therefore, if any new idea, a doctrine, a new philosophy, or
even a political or economic movement tries to deny the entire
past, tries to make it bad or worthless, for this reason alone we
must be extremely cautious and suspicious. As a rule the reason
for such hatred is either its own inferiority or even an evil inten-
tion as such. A really beneficial renascence of humanity will
alwa)^ have to continue building where the last good foundation
stops. It will not have to be ashamed of using already existing
truths. For the whole of human culture, as well as man himself,
is only the result of a single long development in which every
generation contributed and fitted in its stone. Thus the meaning
and purpose of revolutions is not to tear down the whole building,
but to remove what is bad or unsuitable and to continue building
on the sound spot that has been laid bare.

Thus alone can we and may we speak of the progress of hu-
manity. Otherwise the world would never be redeemed from
chaos, since every generation would be entitled to reject the past
and hence destroy the works of the past as the presupposition for
its own work.

Thus, the saddest thing about the state of our whole culture of
the pre-War period was not only the total impotence of artistic
and cultural creative power in general, but the hatred with
which the memory of the greater past was besmirched and ef-
faced. In nearly aU fields of art, especially in the theater and
literature, we began around the turn of the century to produce
less that was new and significant, but to disparage the best of the
old work and represent it as inferior and surpassed; as though this
epoch of the most humiliating inferiority could surpass anything

262

Mein Kampf

at all. And from this effort to remove the past from the eyes of
the present, the evil intent of the apostles of the future could
dearly and distinctly be seen. By this it should have been rec-
ognized that these were no new, even if false, cultural conceptions,
but a process of destroying all culture, paving the way for a
stultification of healthy artistic feeling: the spiritual preparation
of political Bolshevism. For if the age of Perides seems embodied
in the Parthenon, the Bolshevistic present is embodied in a cubist
monstrosity.

In this connection we must also point to the cowardice which
here again was manifest in the section of our people which on the
basis of its education and poation should have been obligated
to resist this cultural disgrace. But from pure fear of the damor
raised by the apostles of Bolshevistic art, who furiously attacked
anyone who didn’t want to recognize the crown of creation in
them and pilloried him as a backward philistine, they renounced
all serious resistance and reconciled themselves to what seemed
after all inevitable. They were positively scared stiff that these
half-wits or scoimdrds would accuse them of lack of understand-
ing; as though it were a disgrace not to understand the products
of spiritual degenerates or slimy swindlers. These cultural dis-
dples, it is true, possessed a very simple means of passing off their
nonsense as something God knows how important: they passed
off all sorts of incomprehensible and obviously crazy stuff on
their amazed fellow men as a so-called inner experience, a cheap
way of taking any word of opposition out of the mouths of most
people in advance. For beyond a doubt this could be an inner
experience; the doubtful part was whether it is permissible to
dish up the hallucinations of lunatics or criminals to the healthy
world. The works of a Moritz von Schwind, or of a Bocklin, were
also an inner experience, but of artists graced by God and not of
downs.

Here was a good occasion to study the pitiful cowardice of our
so-called intelligentsia, which dodged any serious resistance to
this poisoning of the healthy instinct of our people and left it to
the people themselves to deal with this insolent nonsense. In

Heaps op Humanity

263

order not to be considered lacking in artistic unders tanding , peo-
ple stood for every mockery of art and ended up by becoming
really uncertain in the judgment of good and bad.

All in all, these were tokens of times that were getting very bad.

« * *

As another disquieting attribute, the following must yet be
stated:

In the nineteenth century our cities began more and more to
lose the character of cultural sites and to descend to the level of
mere human settlements. The small attachment of our present
big-city proletariat for the town they live in is the consequence of
the fact that it is only the individual’s accidental local stopping
place, and nothing more. This is partly connected with the fre-
quent change of residence caused by social conditions, which do
not give a man time to form a closer bond with the city, and an-
other cause is to be found in the general cultural insignificance
and poverty of our present-day cities per se.

At the time of the wars of liberation, the German cities were
not only small in number, but also modest as to size. The few
really big cities were mostly princely residences, and as such
nearly always possessed a certain cultural value and for the most
part also a certain artistic picture. The few places with more than
fifty thousand inhabitants were, compared to present-day cities
with the same population, rich in scientific and artistic treasures.
When Munich numbered sixty thousand souls, it was already
on its way to becoming one of the first German art centers; today
nearly every factory town has reached this number, if not many
timps surpassed it, yet some cannot lay claim to the slightest real
values. Masses of apartments and tenements, and nothing more.
How, in view of such emptiness, any special bond could be ex-
pected to arise with such a town must remain a mystery. No one
will be particularly attached to a city which has nothing more to
offer than every other, which lacks every individual note and in

264

Mein Kampf

which everything has been carefully avoided which might even
look like art or anything of the sort.

But, as if this were not enough, even the really big cities grow
relatively poorer in real art treasures with the mounting increase
in the population. They seem more and more standardized and
give entirely the same picture as the poor little factory towns, ,
though in larger dimensions. What recent times have added to
the cultural content of our big cities is totally inadequate. AU
our cities are living on the fame and treasures of the past. For
instance, take from present-day Munich everything that was
created under Ludwig I,* and you will note with horror how poor
the addition of significant artistic creations has been since that
time. The same is true of Berlin and most other big cities.

The essential point, however, is the following: our big cities of
today possess no monuments dominating the city picture, which
might somehow be regarded as the s)mibols of the whole epoch.
This was true in the cities of antiquity, since nearly every one
possessed a special monument in which it took pride. The char-
acteristic aspect of the ancient city did not lie in private buildings,
but in the community monuments which seemed made, not for
the moment, but for eternity, because they were intended to re-
flect, not the wealth of an individual owner, but the greatness and
we2ilth of the community. Thus arose monuments which were
very well suited to unite the individual inhabitant with his city in
a way which today sometimes seems almost incomprehensible to
us. For what the ancient had before his eyes was less the humble
houses of private owners than the magnificent edifices of the
whole community. Compared to them the dwelling house really
sank to the level of an insignificant object of secondary impor-
tance.

* Ludwig I, King of Bavaria from 1825 to 1848. Hitler apparently over-
looks the fact that from 1806 to 1809 he fought on the ade of Napoleon
against Austria and Prussia. Ludwig was a man of scholarly and artistic
leanings; he made Munich a home of the arts. He was an enthusiast for
Greek independence, and his son Otto became the first Eiing of independent
Greece.

Department Store and Hotel

265

Only if we compare the dimensions of the ancient state struc-
tures with contemporary dwelling houses can we imderstand the
overpowering sweep and force of this emphasis on the princi-
ple of giving first place to public works. The few stUl towering
colossuses which we admire in the ruins and wreckage of the
■ ancient world are not former business palaces, but temples and
state structures; in other words, works whose owner was the
community. Even in the splendor of late Rome the first place
was not taken by the villas and palaces of individual citizens, but
by the temples and baths, the stadiums, circuses, aqueducts,
basilicas, etc., of the state, hence of the whole people.

Even the Germanic Middle Ages upheld the same guiding
principle, though amid totally different conceptions of art. What
in antiquity found its expression in the Acropolis or the Pantheon
now cloaked itself in the forms of the Gothic Cathedral. Like
giants these monumental structmes towered over the swarming
frame, wooden, and brick buildings of the medieval city, and thus
became symbols which even today, with the tenements climbing
higher and higher beside them, determine the character and pic-
ture of these towns. Cathedrals, town halls, grain markets, and
battlements are the visible signs of a conception which in the last
analysis was the same as that of antiquity.

Yet how truly deplorable the relation between state buildings
and private buildings has become today! If the fate of Rome
should strike Berlin, future generations would some day admire
the department stores of a few Jews as the mightiest works of our
era and the hotels of a few corporations as the characteristic ex-
pression of the culture of our times. Just compare the miserable
discrepancy prevailing in a city like even Berlin between the
structures of the Reich and those of finance and commerce.

Even the sum of money spent on state buildings is usually
laughable and inadequate. Works are not built for eternity, but
at most for the need of the moment. And in them there is no
dominant higher idea. At the time of its construction, the Berlin
Sckloss was a work of different stature than the new library, for
instance, in the setting of the present time. While a single battle-

266

Mein Kaupf

ship represented a value of approximately sixty millions, hardly
half of this sum was approved for the first magnificent building
of the Reich, intended to stand for eternity, the Reichstag Build-
ing. Indeed, when the question of interior furnishings came up
for decision, the exalted house voted against the use of stone and
ordered the walls trimmed with plaster; this time, I must admit,
the parliamentarians did right for a change: stone walls are no
place for plaster heads.

Thus, our cities of the present lack the outstanding s3Tnbol of
national community which, we must therefore not be surprised to
find, sees no symbol of itself in the dties. The inevitable result
is a desolation whose practical effect is the total indifference of
the big-city dweller to the destiny of his city.

This, too, is a sign of our declining culture and our general col-
lapse. The epoch is stifling in the pettiest utilitarianism or better
expressed in the service of money. And we have no call for sur-
prise if under such a deity little sense of heroism remains. The
present time is only harvesting what the immediate past has
sown.

❖

* * *

All these s3miptoins of decay are in the last analysis only the
consequences of the absence of a definite, uniformly acknowledged
philosophy and the resultant general uncertainty in the judgment
and attitude toward the various great problems of the time.
That is why, beginning in education, everyone is half-hearted
and vacillating, shimning responsibility and thus ending in
cowardly tolerance of even recognized abuses. Humanitarian
bilge becomes stylish and, by weakly yielding to cankers and
sparing individuals, the future of millions is sacrificed.

How widespread the general disunity was growing is shown by
an examination of religious conditions before the War. Here,
too, a unified and effective philosophical conviction had long since
been lost in large sections of the nation. In this the members

Religious Conditions

267

officially breaking away from the churches play a less important
r61e than those who are completely indifferent. While both de-
nominations maintain missions in Asia and Africa in order to win
new followers for their doctrine — an activity which can boast
but very modest success compared to the advance of the Moham-
medan faith in particular — right here in Europe they lose mil-
lions and millions of inward adherents who either are alien to all
religious life or simply go their own ways. The consequences,
particularly from the moral point of view, are not favorable.

Also noteworthy is the increasingly violent struggle against
the dogmatic foimdations of the various churches without which
in this human world the practical existence of a religious faith is
not conceivable. The great masses of people do not consist of
philosophers; precisely for the masses, faith is often the sole
foundation of a moral attitude. The various substitutes have not
proved so successful from the standpoint of results that they could
be regarded as a useful replacement for previous religious creeds.
But if religious doctrine and faith are really to embrace the broad
masses, the unconditional authority of the content of this faith
is the foundation of all efficacy. What the current mores^
without which assuredly hundreds of thousands of well-bred
people would live sensibly and reasonably but millions of others
would not, are for general living, state principles are for the state,
and dogmas for the current religion. Only through them is the
wavering and infinitely interpretable, purely intellectual idea
delimited and brought into a form without which it could never
become faith. Otherwise the idea would never pass beyond a
metaphysical conception; in short, a philosophical opinion. The
attack against dogmas as such, therefore, strongly resembles the
struggle against the general legal foundations of a state, and, as
the latter would end in a total anarchy of the state, the former
would end in a worthless religious nihilism.

For the political man, the value of a religion must be estimated
less by its deficiencies than by the virtue of a visibly better sub-'
stitute. As long as this appears to be lacking, what is present can
be demolished only by fools or criminals.

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Mein Kampf

Not the smallest blame for the none too delectable religious
conditions must be borne by those who encumber the religious
idea with too many things of a purely earthly nature and thus
often bring it into a totally unnecessary conflict with so-called
exact science. In this victory will almost always fall to the latter,
though perhaps after a hard struggle, and religion will suffer
serious damage in the eyes of all those who are unable to raise
themselves above a purely superficial knowledge.

Worst of aU, however, is the devastation wrought by the misuse
of religious conviction for political ends. In truth, we cannot
sharply enough attack those wretched crooks who would like to
make religion an implement to perform political or rather business
services for them. These insolent liars, it is true, proclaim their
creed in a stentorian voice to the whole world for other sinners to
hear; but their intention is not, if necessary, to die for it, but to
live better. For a single political swindle, provided it brings in
enough, they are willing to sell the heart of a whole religion; for
ten parliamentary mandates they would ally themselves with
the Marxistic mortal enemies of all religions — and for a minister’s
chair they would even enter into marriage with the devil, unless
the devil were deterred by a remnant of decency.

If in Germany before the War religious life for many had an
unpleasant aftertaste, this could be attributed to the abuse of
Christianity on the part of a so-called ‘ Christian’ party and the
shameless way in which they attempted to identify the Catholic
faith with a political party.

This false association was a calamity which may have brought
parliamentary mandates to a number of good-for-nothings but
injury to the Church.

The consequence, however, had to be borne by the whole na-
tion, since the outcome of the resultant slackening of religious life
occurred at a time when everyone was be ginnin g to waver and
vacillate an3nvay, and the traditional foundations of ethics and
morality were threatening to collapse.

This, too, created cracks and rifts in our nation which might
present no danger as long as no special strain arose, but which

Aimlessness of German Policy

269

inevitably became catastrophic when by the force of great events
the question of the inner solidity of the nation achieved decisive
importance.

Likewise in the field of politics the observant eye could discern
evils which, if not remedied or altered within a reasonable time,
could be and had to be regarded as signs of the Reich’s coming
decay. The aimlessness of German domestic and foreign policy
was apparent to everyone who was not purposely blind. The
regime of compromise seemed to be most in keeping with Bis-
marck’s conception that ‘politics is an art of the possible.’ But
between Bismarck and the later German chancellors there was
a slight difference which made it permissible for the former to
let fall such an utterance on the nature of politics while the same
view from the mouths of his successors could not but take on an
entirely different meaning. For Bismarck with this phrase only
wanted to say that for the achievement of a definite politick
goal all possibilities should be utilized, or, in other words, that
all possibilities should be taken into accoimt; in the view of his
successors, however, this utterance solemnly released them from
the necessity of having any political ideas or goals whatever.
And the leadership of the Reich at this time really had no more
political goals; for the necessary foundation of a definite philos-
ophy was lacking, as well as the necessary clarity on the inner
laws governing the development of all political life.

There were not a few who saw things blackly in this respect
and flayed the planlessness and heedlessness of the Reich’s poli-
cies, and well recognized their inner weakness and hoUowness,
but these were only outsiders in political life; the official govern-
ment authorities passed by the observations of a Houston Stewart
Chamberlain ^ with the same indifference as still occurs today.

‘ Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927). Son of an English general,
studied in Geneva. Went to Germany in 1885 and remained there until his
death. He became a staunch German patriot and pan-German, a dose
friend of William II. In 1908, he married Eva Wagner, Richard’s daughter,
and went to live in Bayreuth. His chief work is Die Grundlagen das neun-

270

Mein Kauff

These people are too stupid to think anything for themselves
and too conceited to leam what is necessary from others — an
age-old truth which caused Oxenstiema to cry out: ‘The world
is governed by a mere fraction of wisdom’;' and indeed nearly
every ministerial secretary embodies only an atom of this frac-
tion. Only since Germany has become a republic, this no longer
applies. That is why it has been forbidden by the Law for the
Defense of the Republic * to believe, let alone discuss, any such
thought. Oxenstiema was lucky to live when he did, and not
in this wise republic of ours.

Even in the pre-War period that institution which was sup-
posed to embody the strength of the Reich was recognized by
many as its greatest weakness: the parliament or Reichstag.
Cowardice and irresponsibility were here completely wedded.

One of the foolish remarks which today we not infrequently
hear is that parliamentarism in Germany has ‘gone wrong since
the revolution.’ This too easily gives the impression that it was

teknten J ahrhundais (Powndations of Iho Nineteenth Cenluty), Shortly before
his death he met Hitler, by whom he was greatly impressed. Many of Hitler’s
ideas seem to originate in Chamberlain. Alfred Rosenberg is said to have
prepared excerpts from Chamberlain’s ponderous work for Der Fiihrer to
read.

' The usual version of this saying is, 'Weisst du nicht mein Sohn mit vne
u>enig Verstand die Wdt revert wird?' (Do you not know, my son, with how
little understanding the world is governed?) Hitler’s cryptic formulation
seems to be his own. The saying has been attributed to Pope Julius HI
(1550-1555) and to Axel Oxenstiema (1583-1654), prime minister to
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. It does not occur in any of Oxenstiema’s
works, but was attributed to him by Johann Arkenholtz, an eighteenth-
century writer, in his Schwedische MerkuHirdigkeiten (^Swedish Curiosities).
It has also been attributed to various other people. The phrase apparently
had considerable currency at the beginning of the century, for tte Frank-
furter Zeitung for October 26, 1910, carries an article on its origin.

^‘Ceselz zum Schutz der Republik,’ passed as a result of the murder of
Walter Rathenau on July 21, 1922. Contains penal provisions against
membership in any organization plotting to assassinate members of the
government or to overthrow the government by force; it also punishes insults
to deceased members of the government, to the republican state form, or the
flag. It includes provisions governing meetings and the press. Passage of
the law was onposed by the extreme Right and Left.

Pariiamentary Half Measures

271

different before the revolution. In reality the effect of this insti-
tution can be nothing else than devastating — and this was true
even in those days when most people wore blinders and saw
nothing and wanted to see nothing. For if Germany was crushed,
it was owing not least to this institution; no thanks are owing
to the Reichstag that the catastrophe did not occur earlier;
this must be attributed to the resistance to the activity of this
gravedigger of the German nation and the German Reidi, which
persisted in the years of peace.

Out of the vast number of devastating evils for which this
institution was directly or indirectly responsible, I shall pick
only a single one which is most in keeping with the inner essence
of this most irresponsible institution of all times: the terrible
haJf-heartedness and weakness of the political leaders of the
Reich both at home and abroad, which, primarily attributable to
the activities of the Reichstag, developed into one of the chief
reasons for the political collapse.

Half-hearted was everything that was subject in any way to
the influence of this parliament, regardless which way you look.

Ehilf-hearted and weak was the alliance policy of the Reich
in its foreign relations. By trying to preserve peace it steered
inevitably toward war.

Half-hearted was the Polish policy. It consisted in irritating
without ever seriously going through with anything. The result
was neither a victory for the Germans nor conciliation of the
Poles, but hostility with Russia instead.

Half-hearted was the solution of the Alsace-Lorraine question.
Instead of crushing the head of the French hydra once and for
all with a brutal fist, and then granting the Alsatian equal rights,
neither of the two was done. Nor could it be, for in the ranks
of the biggest parties sat the biggest traitors — in the Center,
for example, Herr Wetterle.*

1 Emile Wetterlg, Alsatian Catholic politician. From 1898 to 1914 he
belonged to the Reichstag, and in 1910 he founded the Alsatian Nationalist
Party. Bitterly hostile to Germany, he fled to France in 1914. In 1919 he
became a French deputy. His books include Les Coidisses du Reichstag
(1918) and U Alsace el La Guerre (1919).

272

Mein Kahpe

All this, however, would have been bearable if the general
half-heartedness had not taken possession of that power on whose
existence the survival of the Reich ultimately depended; the
army.

The sins of the so-called ‘German Reichstag’ would alone
suffice to cover it for aU times with the curse of the German
nation. For the most miserable reasons, these parliamentary
rabble stole and struck from the hand of the nation its weapon
of self-preservation, the only defense of our people’s freedom and
independence. If today the graves of Flanders field were to
open, from them would arise the bloody accusers, hundreds of
thousands of the best young Germans who, due to the unscrupu-
lousness of these parliamentarian criminals, were driven, poorly
trained and half-trained, into the arms of death; the fatherland
lost them and millions of crippled and dead, solely and alone so
that a few hundred misleaders of the people could perpetrate
their political swindles and blackmail, or merely rattle o2 their
doctrinaire theories.

While the Jews in their Marxist and democratic press pro-
claimed to the whole world the lie about ‘German militarism’
and sought to incriminate Germany by all means, the Marxist
and democratic parties were obstructing any comprehensive
training of the German national man-power. The enormous
crime that was thus committed could not help but be clear to
everyone who just considered that, in case of a coming war, the
entire nation would have to take up arms, and that, therefore,
through the rascality of these savory representatives of their
own so-called ‘popular representation,’ millions of Germans were
driven to face the enemy half-trained and badly trained. But
even if the consequences resulting from the brutal and savage
imscrupulousness of these parliamentary pimps were left entirely
out of consideration: this lack of trained soldiers at the begin-
ning of the War could easily lead to its loss, and this was most
terribly confirmed in the great World War.

The loss of the fight for the freedom and independence of the
German nation is the result of the half-heartedness and weakness

Erroneous Naval Policy 273

manifested even in peacetime as regards drafting the entire
national man-power for the defense of the fatherland.

If too few recruits were trained on the land, the same haU-
heartedness was at work on the sea, making the weapon of
national self-preservation more or less worthless. Unfortunately,
the navy leadership was itself infected with the spirit of half-
heartedness. The tendency to build all ships a little smaller than
the English ships which were being launched at the same time
was hardly farsighted, much less brilliant. Especially a fleet
which from the beginning can in point of pure numbers not be
brought to the same level as its presumable adversary must seek
to compensate for the lack of numbers by the superior fighting
power of its individual ships. It is the superior fighting power
which matters and not any legendary superiority in ‘quality.’
Actually modem technology is so far advanced and has achieved
so much uniformity in the various civilized countries that it
must be held impossible to give the ships of one power an appreci-
ably larger combat value than the ships of like tonnage of an-
other state. And it is even less conceivable to achieve a superi-
ority with smaller deplacement as compared to larger.

In actual fact, the smaller tonnage of the German ships was
possible only at the cost of speed and armament. The phrase
with which people attempted to justify this fact showed a very
serious lack of logic in the department responsible for this in
peacetime. They declared, for instance, that the material of the
German guns was so obviously superior to the British that the
German 28-centimeter gun was not behind the British 30.5-
centimeter gun in performance!!

But for this very reason it would have been our duty to change
over to the 30.5-centimeter gun, for the goal should have been
the achievement, not of equal but of superior fighting power.
Otherwise it would have been superfluous for the army to order

274

Mein Kampf

the 42-centimeter mortar, since the German 21-centimeter mortar
was in itself superior to any then existing high trajectory French
cannon, and the fortresses would have likewise fallen to the
30.5-centimeter mortar. The leadership of the land army, how-
ever, thought soundly, while that of the navy unfortunately
did not.

The neglect of superior artillery power and superior speed lay
entirely in the absolutely erroneous so-called ‘idea of risk.’ The
navy leadership by the very form in which it expanded the fleet
renounced attack and thus from the outset inevitably assumed
the defensive. But in this they also renounced the ultimate suc-
cess which is and can only be forever in attack.

A ship of smaller speed and weaker armament will as a rule be
sent to the bottom by a speedier and more heavily armed enemy
at the firing distance favorable for the latter. A number of our
cruisers were to find this out to their bitter grief. The utter
mistakenness of the peacetime opinion of the navy staff was
shown by the War, which forced the introduction, whenever
possible, of modified armament in old ships and better armament
in newer ones. If in the battle of Skagerrak the German ships
had had the tonnage, the armament, the same speed as the
English ships, the British navy would have found a watery grave
beneath the hurricane of the more accurate and more effective
German 38-centimeter shells.

Japan carried on a different naval policy in those days. There,
on principle, the entire emphasis was laid on giving every single
new ship superior fighting power over the presumable adversary.
The result was a greater possibility of offensive utilization of the
navy.

While the staff of the land army still kept free of such basically
false trains of thought, the navy, which unfortunately had better
‘parliamentary’ representation, succumbed to the spirit of parlia-
ment. It was organized on the basis of half-baked ideas and was
later used in a similar way. What immortal fame the navy never-
theless achieved could only be set to the accoimt of the skill of
the German armaments worker and the ability and incomparable

German Advantages

275

heroism of the individual ofl&cers and crews. If the previous naval
high command had shown corresponding intelligence, these sac-
rifices would not have been in vain.

Thus perhaps it was precisely the superior parliamentary dex-
terity of the navy’s peacetime head that resulted in its misfor-
time, since, even in its building, parliamentary instead of purely
military criteria unfortunately began to play the decisive r61e.
The half-heartedness and weakness as well as the meager logic
in thinking,^ characteristic of the parliamentary institution,
began to color the leadership of the navy.

The land army, as already emphasized, still refrained from
such basically false trains of thought. Particularly the colonel
in the great General Staff of that time, Ludendorff, carried on a
desperate struggle against the criminal half-heartedness and
weakness with which the Reichstag approached the vital prob-
lems of the nation, and for the most part negated them. If the
struggle which this officer then carried on was nevertheless in
vain, the blame was borne half by parliament and half by the
attitude and weakness — even more miserable, if possible —
of Reich Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg. Yet today this does
not in the least prevent those who were responsible for the
German collapse from putting the blame precisely on him who
alone combated this neglect of national interests — one swindle
more or less is nothing to these born crooks.

Anyone who contemplates all the sacrifices which were heaped
on the nation by the criminal frivolity of these most irre-
sponsible among irresponsibles, who passes in review aU the
uselessly sacrificed dead and maimed, as well as the boundless
shame and disgrace, the immeasurable misery which has now
struck us, and knows that all this happened only to dear the
path to ministers’ chairs for a gang of unscrupulous climbers and
job-himters — anyone who contemplates all this will understand
that these creatures can, believe me, be described only by words
such as ‘scoundrd,’ ‘villain,’ ‘scum,’ and ‘criminal,’ otherwise
the iTYPaning and purpose of having these expressions in our lin-

‘ ‘Ceringe Logik im Denken’

276

Mein Kampp

guistic usage would be incomprehensible. For compared to these
traitors to the nation, every pimp is a man of honor.

* * *

Strangely enough, aU the really seamy sides of old Germany
attracted attention only when the inner solidarity of the nation
would inevitably suffer thereby. Yes, indeed, in such cases the
unpleasant truths were positively bellowed to the broad masses,
while otheiw'ise the same people preferred modestly to conceal
many things and in part simply to deny them. This was the case
when the open discussion of a question might have led to an im-
provement. At the same time, the government ofiBces in charge
knew next to nothing of the value and nature of propaganda.
The fact that by clever and persevering use of propaganda even
heaven can be represented as hell to the people, and conversely
the most wretched life as paradise, was known only to the Jew,
who acted accordingly; the German, or rather his government,
hadn’t the faintest idea of this.

During the War we were to suffer most gravely for all this.

* * *

Along with all the evils of German life before the War here
indicated, and many more, there were also many advantages.
In a fair examination, we must even recognize that most of our
weaknesses were largely shared by other countries and peoples,
and in some, indeed, we were put completely in the shade, while
they did not possess mmy of our own actual advantages.

At the head of these advantages we can, among other things,
set the fact that, of nearly all European peoples, the German
people still made the greatest attempt to preserve the national
character of its economy and despite certain evil omens was least
subject to international financial control. A dangerous advan-

Psychological Errors of the Old Regime 277

tage, to be sure, whidi later became the greatest instigator of the
World War. But aside from this and many other things, we
must, from the vast number of healthy sources of national
strength, pick three institutions which in their kind were ex-
emplary and in part unequaled.

First, the state form as such and the special stamp which it
had received in modern Germany.

Here we may really disregard the individual monarchs who as
men are subject to aU the weaknesses which are customarily
visited upon this earth and its children; if we were not lenient in
this, we would have to despair of the present altogether, for are
not the representatives of the present regime, considered as per-
sonalities, intellectually and morally of the most modest propor-
tions that we can conceive of even racking our brains for a long
time? Anyone who measures the ‘value’ of the German revolu-
tion by the value and stature of the personalities which it has
given the German people since November, 1919, will have to
hide his head for shame before the judgment of future genera-
tions, whose tongue it will no longer be possible to stop by pro-
tective laws, etc., and which therefore will say what today all of
us know to be true, to wit, that brains and virtue in our modem
German leaders are inversely proportionate to their vices and
the size of their mouths.

To be sure, the monarchy had grown alien to many, to the
broad masses above all. This was the consequence of the fact
that the monarchs were not always surrounded by the brightest
— to put it mildly — and above all not by the sincerest minds.
Unfortunately, a number of them liked flatterers better than
straightforward natures, and consequently it was the flatterers
who ‘instructed’ them. A very grave evil at a time when many
of the world’s old opinions had undergone a great change, spread-
ing natm-ally to the estimation in which many old-established
traditions of the courts were held.

Thus, at the turn of the century the common man in the street
could no longer find any special admiration for the princess who
rode along the front in uniform. Apparently those in authority

278

Mein Kamff

were incapable of correctly Judging the effect of such a parade in
the eyes of the people, for if they had, such imfortunate perform-
ances would doubtless not have occurred. Moreover, the humani-
tarian bilge — not alwa3rs entirely sincere — that these circles
went in for repelled more than it attracted. If, for example.
Princess X condescended to taste a sample of food in a people’s
kitchen, in former days it might have looked well, but now the
result was the opposite. We may be justified in assuming that
Her Highness really had no idea that the food on the day she
sampled it was a little different from what it usually was; but it
was quite enough that the people knew it.

Thus, what may possibly have been the best intention became
ridiculous, if not actually irritating.

Stories about the monarch’s proverbial frugality, his much too
early rising and his slaving away until late into the night, amid
the permanent peril of threatening undernourishment, aroused
very dubious comments. People did not ask to know what food
and how much of it the monarch deigned to consume; they did
not begrudge him a ‘square’ meal; nor were they out to de-
prive him of the sleep he needed; they were satisfied if in other
things, as a man and character, he was an honor to the name of
his house and to the nation, and if he fulfilled his duties as a ruler.
Telling fairy tales helped little, but did aU the more harm.

This and many similar things were mere trifles, however.
What had a worse effect on sections of the nation, that were un-
fortunately very large, was the mounting conviction that people
were ruled from the top no matter what happened, and that,
therefore, the individual had no need to bother about anything.
As long as the government was really good, or at least had the
best intentions, this was bearable. But woe betide if the old
government whose intentions were after all good were replaced
by a new one which was not so decent; then spineless compliance
and childlike faith were the gravest calamity that could be con-
ceived of.

But along with these and many other weaknesses, there were
unquestionable assets.

The Army — An Irreplaceable School

279

For one thing, the stability of the entire state leadership,
brought about by the monarchic form of state and the removal
of the highest state posts from the welter of speculation by am-
bitious politicians. Furthermore, the dignity of the institution as
such and the authority which this alone created : likewise the rais-
ing of the civil service and particularly the army above the level
of party obligations. One more advantage was the personal em-
bodiment of the state’s summit in the monarch as a person, and
the example of responsibility which is bound to be stronger in a
monarch than in the accidental rabble of a parliamentary ma-
jority — the proverbial fncorruptibility of the German adminis-
tration could primarily be attributed to this. Finally, the cultu-
ral value of the monarchy for the German people was high and
could very well compensate for other drawbacks. The German
court cities were stiU the refuge of an artistic state of mind,
which is increasingly threatening to die out in our materialistic
times. What the German princes did for art and science, par-
ticularly in the nineteenth century, was exemplary. The present
period in any case cannot be compared with it.

* * *

As the greatest credit factor, however, in this period of incipi-
ent and slowly spreading decomposition of our nation, we must
note the army. It was the mightiest school of the German nation,
and not for nothing was the hatred of all our enemies directed
against this buttress of national freedom and independence. No
more glorious monument can be dedicated to this unique institu-
tion than a statement of the truth that it was slandered, hated,
combated, and also feared by all inferior peoples. The fact that
the rage of the international exploiters of our people in Versailles
was directed primarily against the old German army permits
us to recognize it as the bastion of our national freedom against
the power of the stock exchange. Without this warning power,
the intentions of Versailles would long since have been carried out

Meix Kavpt

280

against our people. What the German people owes to the aimy
can be briefly summed tq> in a word, to wit: everything.

The arm}* trained men for tmconditional responsbSity at a
time when this quality had grown rare and evasion of it was be-
coming more and more the order of the day, starting with the
model protot^'pe of all iiresponability, the parliament; it trained
men in personal courage in an age when cowardice threatened
to become a raging disease and the spirit of sacrifice, the willing-
ness to give oneself for the general welfare, was looked on almost
as stupidity, and the only man regarded as intelligent was the
one who best knew how to indulge and advance his own ego; it
was the school that still taught the indisiduai German not to
seek the salvation of the nation in lying phrases about an inter-
national brotherhood between Xegroes, Germans, Chinese,
French, etc., but in the force and solidarity of our own nation.

The army trained men in relation while elsewhere in life
indecision and doubt were beginning to determine the actions
of men. In an age when everywhere the know-it-alls were setting
the tone, it meant something to uphold the principle that some
command is always better than none. In this sole principle there
was still an unspoiled robust health which would long since have
disappeared from the rest of our life if the army and its training
had not provided a continuous renewal of this primal force.
We need only see the terrible indecision of the Reich’s present
leaders, who can summon up the energy for no action unless it
is the forced signing of a new decree for plundering the people;
in this case, to be sure, they reject all responsibility and with the
agility of a court stenographer sign everything that anyone may
see fit to put before them. In this case the decision is easy to
take; for it is dictated.

The army trained men in idealism and devotion to the father-
land and its greatness while everywhere else greed and material-
ism had spread abroad. It educated a single people in contrast
to the division into classes and in this perhaps its sole mistake
was the institution of voluntary one-year enlistment. A mis-
take, because through it the prindple of unconditional equality

The Incomparable Civil Service

281

was broken, and the man with higher education was removed
from the setting of his general environment, while precisely the
exact opposite would have been advantageous. In view of the
great unworldliness of our upper classes and their constantly
mounting estrangement from their own people, the army could
have exerted a particularly beneficial effect if in its own ranks,
at least, it had avoided any segregation of the so-called intelli-
gentsia. That this was not done was a mistake; but what insti-
tution in this world makes no mistakes? In this one, at any rate,
the good was so predominant that the few weaknesses lay far
beneath the average degree of human imperfection.^

It must be attributed to the army of the old Reich as its high-
est merit that at a time when heads were generally counted by
majorities, it placed heads above the majority. Confronted with
the Jewish-democratic idea of a blind worship of numbers, the
army sustained belief in personality. And thus it trained what
the new epoch most urgently needed; men. In the morass of a
universally spreading softening and effeminization, each year
three hundred and fifty thousand vigorous young men sprang
from the ranks of the army, men who in their two years’ train-
ing had lost the softness of youth and achieved bodies hard as
steel. The young man who practiced obedience during this tune
could then learn to command. By his very step you could recog-
nize the soldier who had done his service.

This was the highest school of the German nation, and it was
not for nothing that the bitterest hatred of those who from
envy and greed needed and desired the impotence of the Reich
and the defenselessness of its citizens was concentrated on it.
What many Germans in their blindness or ill will did not want to
see was recognized by the foreign world: the German army was
the mightiest weapon serving the freedom of the German nation
and the sustenance of its children.

* # *

‘ '. . . weit unter dem DurchschnUtsgrade der menscMichen Vnzullinglicih

282

Mein Kampf

The third in the league, along with the state form and the
army, was the incomparable civil service of the old Reich.

Germany was the best organized and best administered country
in the world. The German government ofl&cial might well be
accused of bureaucratic red tape, but in the other countries
things were no better in this respect; they were worse. But what
the other countries did not possess was the wonderful solidity of
this apparatus and the incorruptible honesty of its members. It
■was better to be a little old-fashioned, but honest and loyal, than
enlightened and modern, but of inferior character and, as is
often seen today, ignorant and incompetent. For if today people
like to pretend that the German administration of the pre-War
period, though bureaucratically sound, was bad from a business
point of view, only the following answer can be given: what
country in the world had an institution better directed and better
organized in a business sense than Germany’s state railways?
It was reserved to the revolution to go on wrecking this exem-
plary apparatus until at last it seemed ripe for being taken out
of the hands of the nation and socialized according to the lights
of this Republic’s founders; in other words, made to serve inter-
national stock exchange capital, the power behind the German
revolution.

What especially distinguished the German civil service and
administrative apparatus was their independence from the indi-
■vidual governments whose passing political 'views could have no
effect on the job of German d'vil servant. Since the revolution, it
must be admitted, this has completely changed. Ability and
competence were replaced by party ties and a self-reliant, inde-
pendent character became more of a hindrance than a help.

The state form, the army, and the d'vil service formed the
basis for the old Reich’s wonderful power and strength. These
first and foremost were the reasons for a quality which is totally
lacking in the present-day state: state’s authority! For this is
not based on bull-sessions in parliaments or pro'vincial diets, or
on laws for its protection, or court sentences to frighten those
who insolently deny it, etc., but on the general confidence wluch

The Ultimate Cause of the Collapse 283

may and can be placed in the leadership and administration of a
commonwealth. This confidence, in turn, results only from an
unshalcable inner faith in the selflessness and honesty of the gov-
ernment and administration of a country and from an agreement
between the spirit of the laws and the general ethical view. For
in the long run government systems are not maintained by the
pressure of violence, but by faith in their soundness and in the
truthfulness with which they represent and advance the interests
of a people.

* * *

Gravely as certain evils of the pre-War period corroded and
threatened to undermine the inner strength of the nation, it
must not be forgotten that other states suffered even more than
Germany from most of these ailments and yet in the critical hour
of danger did not flag and perish. But if we consider that the
German weaknesses before the War were balanced by equally
great strengths, the ultimate cause of the coUapse can and must
lie in a different field; and this is actually the case.

The deepest and ultimate reason for the decline of the old
Reich lay in its failure to recognize the racial problem and its
importance for the historical development of peoples. For events
in the lives of peoples are not expressions of chance, but processes
related to the self-preservation and propagation of the species
and the race and subject to the laws of Nature, even if people
are not conscious of the inner reason for their actions.

CHAPTER

XI

Nation and Race

T

JL HERE axe some truths which are so obvious
that for this very reason they are not seen or at least not recog-
nized by ordinary people. They sometimes pass by such truisms
as though blind and are most astonished when someone suddenly
discovers what everyone really ought to know, Columbus’s eggs
lie around by the hundreds of thousands, but Columbuses are
met with less frequently.

Thus men without exception wander about in the garden of
Nature; they imagine that they know practically everything and
yet with few exceptions pass blindly by one of the most patent
principles of Nature’s rule: the inner segregation of the species
of all living beings on this earth.

Even the most superficial observation shows that Nature’s
restricted form of propagation and increase is an almost rigid
basic law of all the innumerable forms of expression of her vital
urge. Every animal mates only with a member of the same
species. The titmouse seeks the titmouse, the finch the finch, the
stork the stork, the field mouse the field mouse, the dormouse
the dormouse, the wolf the she-wolf, etc.

Only unusual circumstances can change this, primarily the com-
pulsion of captivity or any other cause that makes it impossible
to mate within the same species. But then Nature begins to
resist this with aU possible means, and her most visible protest
consists either in refusing further capacity for propagation to

Race

285

bastards or in limiting the fertility of later offspring; in most
cases, however, she takes away the power of resistance to disease
or hostile attacks.

This is only too natural.

Any crossing of two beings not at exactly the same level pro-
duces a medium between the level of the two parents. This
means: the offspring will probably stand higher than the racially
lower parent, but not as high as the higher one. Consequently, it
will later succumb in the struggle against the higher level. Such
mating is contrary to the will of Nature for a higher breeding of
aU life. The precondition for this does not lie in associating
superior and inferior, but in the total victory of the former. The
stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus
sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view
this as cruel, but he after all is only a weak and limited man;
for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development
of organic living beings would be imthinkable.

The consequence of this racial purity,* universally valid in
Nature, is not only the sharp outward delimitation of the vari-
ous races, but their uniform character in themselves. The fox is
always a fox, the goose a goose, the tiger a tiger, etc., and the
difference can lie at most in the varying measure of force, strength,
intelligence, dexterity, endurance, etc., of the individual speci-
mens. But you will never find a fox who in his inner attitude
might, for example, show humanitarian tendencies toward geese,
as similarly there is no cat with a friendly inclination toward mice.

Therefore, here, too, the struggle among themselves arises
less from inner aversion than from hunger and love. In both
cases. Nature looks on calmly, with satisfaction, in fact. In the
struggle for daily bread aU those who are weak and sickly or less
determined succumb, while the struggle of the males for the
female grants the right or opportunity to propagate only to the
healthiest. And struggle is always a means for improving a
species’ health and power of resistance and, therefore, a cause of
its higher development.

* Second edition inserts ‘urge toward’ before ‘racial purity.’

286

Mein Kaupe

If the process were different, all further and higher develop-
ment would cease and the oppoate would occur. For, ance the
inferior always predominates numerically over the best, if both
had the same possibility of preserving life and propagating, the
inferior would multiply so much more rapidly that in the end
the best would me^'itably be driven into the background, unlfyg
a correction of this state of affairs were undertaken. Nature does
just this by subjecting the weaker part to such severe living
conditions that by them alone the number is limited, and by not
permitting the remainder to increase promiscuously, but making
a new and ruthless choice according to strength and health.

No more than Nature desires the mating of weaker xdth
stronger indi\nduals, even less does she desire the blending of a
higher with a lower race, since, if she did, her whole work of
higher breeding, over perhaps hundreds of thousands of years,
night be ruined vith one blow.

Historical e.^perience offers countless proofs of this. It shows
with terrifying clarity that in every mingling of Aryan blood
with that of lower peoples the result was the end of the cultured
people. North America, whose population consists in by far the
largest part of Germanic elements who mixed but little with the
lower colored peoples, shows a different humanity and culture
from Central and South America, where the predominantly Latin
immigrants often mixed with the aborigines on a large scale.
By this one example, we can dearly and distinctly recognize the
effect of racial mixture. The Germanic inhabitant of the Ameri-
can continent, who has remained racially pure and unmixed,
rose to be master of the continent; he wtU remain the master as
long as he does not fall a victim to defilement of the blood.

The result of all racial crossing is therefore in brief always
the following:

(a) Lowering of the level of the higher race;

(b) Physical and intellectual regression and hence the begin-
ning of a slowly but surely progressing sirknpga

To bring about such a development is, then, nothing else but
to an against the will of the eternal creator.

Consequences of Racial Crossing

287

And as a sin this act is rewarded.

When man attempts to rebel against the iron logic of Nature,
he comes into struggle with the principles to which he himself
owes his existence as a man. And this attack ^ must lead to his
own doom.

Here, of course, we encounter the objection of the modern
pacifist, as truly Jewish in its effrontery as it is stupid! ‘Man’s
r61e is to overcome Nature!’

Millions thoughtlessly parrot this Jewish nonsense and end up
by really imagining that they themselves represent a kind of
conqueror of Nature; though in this they dispose of no other
weapon than an idea, and at that such a miserable one, that if it
were true no world at all would be conceivable.

But quite aside from the fact that man has never yet conquered
Nature in anything, but at most has caught hold of and tried
to lift one or another comer of her immense gigantic veil of
eternal riddles and secrets, that in reality he invents nothing but
only discovers everything, that he does not dominate Nature,
but has only risen on the basis of his knowledge of various laws
and secrets of Nature to be lord over those other living creatures
who lack this knowledge — quite aside from all this, an idea can-
not overcome the preconditions for the development and being
of humanity, since the idea itself depends only on man. Without
human beings there is no human idea in this world, therefore,
the idea as such is always conditioned by the presence of human
beings and hence of all the laws which created the precondition
for their existence.

And not only that! Certain ideas are even tied up with certain
men. This applies most of all to those ideas whose content origi-
nates, not in an exact scientific truth, but in the world of emo-
tion, or, as it is so beautifully and clearly expressed today, re-
flects an ‘inner experience.’ All these ideas, which have nothing
to do with cold logic as such, but represent only pure expressions
of feeling, ethical conceptions, etc., are chained to the existence
of men, to whose intellectual imagination and creative power

^ Second edition: ‘so his action against Nature’ instead of ‘this attack.’

288

Mein Kampe

they owe their existence. Precisely in this case the preservation
of these definite races and men is the precondition for the existence
of these ideas. Anyone, for example, who really desired the vic-
tory of the pacifistic idea in this world with all his heart would
have to fight with aU the means at his disposal for the conquest
of the world by the Germans; for, if the opposite should occur,
the last pacifist would die out with the last German, since the
rest of the world has never fallen so deeply as our own people,
unfortunately, has for this nonsense so contrary to Nature and
reason. Then, if we were serious, whether we liked it or not, we
would have to wage wars in order to arrive at pacifism. This and
nothing else was what Wilson, the American world savior, in-
tended, or so at least our German visionaries believed — and
thereby his purpose was fulfilled.

In actual fact the pacifistic-humane idea is perfectly all right
perhaps when the highest tjpe of man has previously conquered
and subjected the world to an extent that makes him the sole
ruler of this earth. Then this idea lacks the power of producing
evil effects in exact proportion as its practical application be-
comes rare and finally impossible. Therefore, first struggle and
then we shall see w'hat can be done.^ Otherwise mankind has
passed the high point of its development and the end is not the
domination of any ethical idea but barbarism and consequently
chaos. At this point someone or other may laugh, but this planet
once moved through the ether for millions of years without
human beings and it can do so again some day if men forget that
they owe their higher existence, not to the ideas of a few crazy
ideologists, but to the knowledge and ruthless application of
Nature’s stem and rigid laws.

Everything we admire on this earth today — science and art,
technology and inventions — is only the creative product of a
few peoples and originally perhaps of one race. On them depends
the existence of this whole culture. If they perish, the beauty
of this earth wiU. sink into the grave with them.

However much the soil, for example, can influence men, the

' Second edition; ‘struggle and then perhaps pacifism.’

Race and Culture

289

result of the influence wiU always be different depending on the
races in question. The low fertility of a living space may spur
the one race to the highest achievements; in others it will only
be the cause of bitterest poverty and final undernourishment with
all its consequences. The inner nature of peoples is always de-
termining for the manner in which outward influences will be
effective. What leads the one to starvation trains the other to
hard work.

All great cultures of the past perished only because the origi-
nally creative race died out from blood poisoning.

The ultimate cause of such a decline was their forgetting that
all culture depends on men and not conversely; hence that to
preserve a certain culture the man who creates it must be pre-
served. This preservation is boimd up with the rigid law of
necessity and the right to victory of the best and stronger in this
world.*

Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not
want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.

Even if this were hard — that is how it is! Assuredly, however,
by far the harder fate is that which strikes the man who thinks
he can overcome Nature, but in the last analysis only mocks her.
Distress, misfortune, and diseases are her answer.

The man who misjudges and disregards the racial laws actually
forfeits the happiness that seems destined to be his. He thwarts
the triumphal march of the best race and hence also the precon-
dition for all human progress, and remains, in consequence,
burdened with aU the sensibility of man, in the animal realm of
helpless misery.^

* * *

* Second edition omits: ‘in this world.’

* ‘und verbleibt in der Folge dann, belastet mil der EmpfindlichkeU des
Menscken, iin Bereich des hUJlosen Jammers der Tiere.’ Second edition has:
‘Er begibt sich in der Folge, bdastel mil der EmpfindlichkeU des Menscken, ins
Bereich des hilflosen Tieres.’ This would read: ‘In consequence, burdened
with all the sensibility of man, he moves into the realm of the helpless beast.’

290

M£IX Kaxff

It is idle to aigue i^udi race or races were the ori^nal rqpie-
sentative of human culture and hence the real founders of all
that we sum up under the word 'humanity.’ It is smpler to
raise this question with regard to the present, and here an easy,
cVjiir answer results. All the human culture, all the results of
art, science, and technology that we see before us todajq are
alnwBt e.xclusively the creative product of the Aryan. This \-ery
fact admits of the not unfounded inference that he alone was
the founder of all higher humanity, therefore representing the
prototjpe of all that we understand by the word ‘man.’ He is
the Prometheus of mankind from whose bright forehead the
di’vine spark of genius has sprung at all times, fore\^r kindling
anew that fire of knowledge which illumined the night of sDent
mysteries and thus caused man to climb the path to mastery'
over the other beings of this earth. Exclude him — and perhaps
after a few' thousand years darkness will again descend on the
earth, human culture will pas, and the world turn to a desert.

If we were to divide mankind into three groups, the founders
of culture, the bearers of culture, the destroyers of culture, only
the Aryan could be considered as the representative of the first
group. From him originate the foundations and walls of all
human creation, and only the outward form and color are de-
termined by the changing traits of character of the various
peoples. He provides the mightiest building stones and plans for
all human progress and only the execution corresponds to the
nature of the varying men and races. In a few decades, for ex-
ample, the entire east of Asia will possess a culture whose ulti-
mate foundation will be Hellenic spirit and Germanic technology,
just as much as in Europe. Only the mtiward form — in part at
least — will bear the features of Asiatic character. It is not true,
as some people think, that Japan adds European technology to
its culture; no, European science and technology are trimmed with
Japanese characteristics. The foundation of actual life is no
longer the special Js^anese culture, although it determines the
color of life — because outwardly, in consequence of its inner
difference, it is more conspicuous to the European — but the

The Culture-Founding Aryan

291

gigantic scientific-technical achievements of Europe and America;
that is, of Aryan peoples. Only on the basis of these achievements
can the Orient follow general human progress. They furnish
the basis of the struggle for daily bread, create weapons and
implements for it, and only the outward form is gradually
adapted to Japanese character.

If beginning today all further Aryan influence on Japan should
stop, assuming that Europe and America should perish, Japan’s
present rise in science and technology might continue for a short
time; but even in a few years the weU would dry up, the Japanese
special character would gain, but the present culture would freeze
and sink back into the slumber from which it was awakened
seven decades ago by the wave of Aryan culture. Therefore, just
as the present Japanese development owes its life to Aryan
origin, long ago in the gray past foreign influence and foreign
spirit awakened the Japanese culture of that time. The best
proof of this is furnished by the fact of its subsequent sclerosis
and total petrifaction. This can occur in a people only when the
original creative racial nucleus has been lost, or if the external
influence which furnished the impetus and the material for the
first development in the cultural field was later lacking. But if it
is established that a people receives the most essential basic
materials of its culture from foreign races, that it assimilates and
adapts them, sind that then, if further external influence is lack-
ing, it rigidifies again and again, such a race may be designated as
‘culture-bearing,’ but never as ‘culture-creating.’ An examination
of the various peoples from this standpoint points to the fact that
practically none of them were originally culture-founding, but
almost always culture-hearing.

Approximately the following picture of their development
always results:

Aryan races — often absurdly small numerically — subject
foreign peoples, and then, stimulated by the special living condi-
tions of the new territory (fertility, climatic conditions, etc.) and
assisted by the multitude of lower-type beings standing at their
disposal as helpers, develop the intellectual and organizational^

292

Mein Kampf

capacities dormant within them. Often in a few millenniums or
even centuries they create cultures which originally bear all the
inner characteristics of their nature, adapted to the above-
indicated special qualities of the soil and subjected beings. In
the end, however, the conquerors transgress against the princi-
ple of blood purity, to which they had first adhered; they begin
to mix with the subjugated inhabitants and thus end their own
existence; for the faU of man in paradise has always been fol-
lowed by his expulsion.

After a thousand years and more, the last visible trace of the
former master people is often seen in the lighter skin color which
its blood left behind in the subjugated race, and in a petrified
culture which it had originally created. For, once the actual and
spiritual conqueror lost himself in the blood of the subjected
people, the fuel for the torch of human progress was lost! Just
as, through the blood of the former masters, the color preserved
a feeble gleam in their memory, likewise the night of cultural life
is gently illumined by the remaining creations of the former light-
bringers. They shine through ail the returned barbarism and too
often inspire the thoughtless observer of the moment with the
opinion that he beholds the picture of the present people before
him, whereas he is only gazing into the mirror of the past.

It is then possible that such a people will a second time, or even
more often in the course of its history, come into contact with
the race of those who once brought it culture, and the memory
of former encounters will not necessarily be present. Uncon-
sciously the remnant of the former master blood will turn toward
the new arrival, and what was first possible only by compulsion
can now succeed through the people’s own wiU. A new cultural
wave makes its entrance and continues until those who have
brought it are again submerged in the blood of foreign peoples.

It will be the task of a futvure cultural and world history to
carry on researches in this light and not to stifle in the rendition
of external facts, as is so often, unfortunately, the case with our
present historical science.

This mere sketch of the development of ‘culture-bearing’ na-

The Culture-Founding Aryan

293

tions gives a picture of the growth, of the activity, and — the
decline — of the true culture-founders of this earth, the Aryans
themselves.

As in daily life the so-caUed genius requires a special cause,
indeed, often a positive impetus, to make him shine, likewise the
genius-race in the life of peoples. In the monotony of everyday
life even significant men often seem insignificant, hardly rising
above the average of their environment; as soon, however, as
they are approached by a situation in which others lose hope or
go astray, the genius rises manifestly from the inconspicuous
average child, not seldom to the amazement of aU those who had
hitherto seen him in the pettiness of bourgeois life — and that is
why the prophet seldom has any honor in his own coimtry. No-
where have we better occasion to observe this than in war.
From apparently harmless children, in difficult hours when
others lose hope, suddenly heroes shoot up with death-defying
determination and an icy cool presence of mind.^ If this hour of
trial had not come, hardly anyone would ever have guessed that
a young hero was hidden in this beardless boy. It nearly always
takes some stimulus to bring the genius on the scene. The ham-
mer-stroke of Fate which throws one man to the ground suddenly
strikes steel in another, and when the shell of everyday life is
broken, the previously hidden kernel lies open before the eyes of
the astonished world. The world then resists and does not want
to believe that the type which is apparently identical with it is
suddenly a very different being; a process which is repeated
with every eminent son of man.

Though an inventor, for example, establishes his fame only on
the day of his invention, it is a mistake to think that genius as
such entered into the man only at this hour — the spark of genius
exists in the brain of the truly creative man from the hour of his
birth. True genius is always inborn and never cultivated, let
alone learned.

As already emphasized, this applies not only to the individual
man but also to the race. Creatively active peoples always have

* ‘eisige Kiihle der Uberlegung.’

294

Mein Kampe

a fundamental creative even if it should not be recognizable
to the eyes of superficial observers. Here, too, outward recogni-
tion is possible only in consequence of accomplished deeds, since
the rest of the world is not capable of recognizing genius in itself,
but sees only its visible manifestations in the form of inventions,
discoveries, buildings, pictures, etc.; here again it often takes a
long time before the world can fight its way through to this
knowledge. Just as in the life of the outstanding individual,
genius or extraordinary ability strives for practical realization
only when spurred on by special occasions, likewise in the life
of nations the creative forces and capacities which are present
can often be exploited only when definite preconditions invite.

We see thk most distinctly in connection with the race which
has been and is the bearer of human cultural development — the
Aryans. As soon as Fate leads them toward special conditions,
their latent abilities be^ to develop in a more and more rapid
sequence and to mold themselves into tangible forms. The cul-
tures which they found in such cases are nearly always decisively
determined by the existing sod, the given climate, and — the
subjected people. This last item, to be sure, is almost the most
decisive. The more primitive the technical foundations for a cul-
tural activity, the more necessary is the presence of human
helpers who, organizationally assembled and employed, must
replace the force of the machine. Without this possibility of
using lower human beings, the Aryan would never have been
able to take his first steps toward his future culture; just as
without the help of various suitable beasts which he knew how
to tame, he would not have arrived at a technology which is now
gradually permitting him to do without these beasts. The say-
ing, ‘The Moor has worked off his debt, the Moor can go,'^
imfortunately has only too deep a meaning. For thousands of
years the horse had to serve man and help him lay the founda-

‘ Schiller. Die VersckwSrung des Fiesko, Act in, Scene 4, spoken by the
Moor. Itpropexly reads: ‘Der Moor hat settle Arbeit getan,' etc. (The Moor
has done his work), but is often quoted in the altered veiaon with ‘Schuldig-
keii’ in place of ‘ArbeiL’

The Culture-Founding Aryan

295

tions of a development which now, in consequence of the motor
car, is making the horse superfluous. In a few years his activity
will have ceased, but without his previous collaboration man
might have had a hard time getting where he is today.

Thus, for the formation of higher cultures the existence of
lower human t3q)es was one of the most essential preconditions,
since they alone were able to compensate for the lack of technical
aids without which a higher development is not conceivable. It
is certain that the first culture of humanity was based less on the
tamed animal than on the use of lower h uman beings.

Only after the enslavement of subjected races did the same
fate strike beasts, and not the other way around, as some people
would like to think. For first the conquered warrior drew the
plow — and only after him the horse. Only pacifistic fools can
regard this as a sign of human depravity, failing to realize that
this development had to take place in order to reach the point
where today these sky-pilots could force their drivel on the world.

The progress of humanity is like climbing an endless ladder; it
is impossible to climb higher without first taking the lower steps.
Thus, the Aryan had to take the road to which reality directed
him and not the one that would appeal to the imagination of a
modem pacifist. The road of reality is hard and difficult, but in
the end it leads where our friend would like to bring humanity by
dreaming, but unfortunately removes more than bringing it
closer.

Hence it is no accident that the first cultures arose in places
where the Aryan, in his encounters with lower peoples, subju-
gated them and bent them to his will. They then became the
first technical instrument in the service of a developing culture.

Thus, the road which the Aryan had to take was clearly marked
out. As a conqueror he subjected the lower beings and regulated
their practical activity under his command, according to his wiU
and for his aims. But in directing them to a useful, though ardu-
ous activity, he not only spared the life of those he subjected;
perhaps he gave them a fate that was better than their previous
so-called ‘freedom.’ As long as he ruthlessly upheld the master

Mein Kampp

296

attitude, not only did he really remain master, but also the
preserver and increaser of culture. For culture was based ex-
clusively on his abilities and hence on his actual survival. As
soon as the subjected people began to raise themselves up and
probably approached the conqueror in language, the sharp divid-
ing wall between master and servant fell. The Aryan gave up
the purity of his blood and, therefore, lost his sojourn in the
paradise which he had made for himself. He became submerged
in the racial mixture, and gradually, more and more, lost his
cultural capacity, until at last, not only mentally but also physi-
cally, he began to resemble the subjected aborigines more than
his own ancestors. For a time he could live on the existing cul-
tural benefits, but then petrifaction set in and he fell a prey to
oblivion.

Thus cultures and empires collapsed to make place for new
formations.

Blood mixture and the resultant drop in the racial level is the
sole cause of the dying out of old cultures; for men do not perish
as a result of lost wars, but by the loss of that force of resistance
which is contained only in pure blood.

All who are not of good race in this world are chaff.

And all occurrences in world hfetory are only the expression of
the races’ instinct of self-preservation, in the good or bad sense.

The question of the inner causes of the Aryan’s importance
can be answered to the effect that they are to be sought less in a
natural instinct of self-preservation than in the special type of
its expression. The will to live, subjectively viewed, is everywhere
equal and different only in the form of its actual expression. In
the most primitive living creatures the instinct of self-preserva-
tion does not go beyond concern for their own ego. Egoism, as
we designate this urge, goes so far that it even embraces time;
the moment itself claims everything, granting nothing to the

Service or the Community

297

coming hours. In this condition the animal lives only for him-
self, seeks food only for his present hunger, and fights only for
his own life. As long as the instinct of self-preservation expresses
itself in this way, every basis is lacking for the formation of a
group, even the most primitive form of family. Even a com-
munity between male and female beyond pure mating, demands
an extension of the instinct of self-preservation, since concern
and struggle for the ego are now directed toward the second party;
the male sometimes seeks food for the female, too, but for the
most part both seek nourishment for the young. Nearly always
one comes to the defense of the other, and thus the first, though
infinitely simple, forms of a sense of sacrifice result. As soon as
this sense extends beyond the narrow limits of the family, the
basis for the formation of larger organisms and finally formal
states is created.

In the low'est peoples of the earth this quality is present only to
a very slight extent, so that often they do not go beyond the
formation of the family. The greater the readiness to subordinate
purely personal interests, the higher rises the ability to establish
comprehensive communities.

This self-sacrificing wiU to give one’s personal labor and if
necessary one’s own life for others is most strongly developed in
the Aryan. The Aryan is not greatest in his mental qualities as
such, but in the extent of his willingness to put all his abilities in
the service of the community. In him the instinct of self-pres-
ervation has reached the noblest form, since he willingly sub-
ordinates his own ego to the life of the community and, if the
hour demands, even sacrifices it.

Not in his intellectual gifts lies the source of the Aryan’s capac-
ity for creating and building culture. If he had just this alone,
he could only act destructively, in no case could he organize;
for the innermost essence of all organization requires that the
individual renounce putting forward his personal opinion and
interests and sacrifice both in favor of a larger group. Only by
way of this general community does he again recover his share.
Now, for example, he no longer works directly for himself, but

298

Mein Kampp

with his activity articulates himself with the community, not
only for his own advantage, but for the advantage of all. The
most wonderful elucidation of this attitude is provided by his
word ‘work,’ by which he does not mean an activity for maintain-
ing life in itself, but exclusively a creative effort that does not
conflict with the interests of the community. Otherwise he
designates human activity, in so far as it serves the instinct of
self-preservation without consideration for his fellow men, as
theft, usury, robbery, burglary, etc.

This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego
to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise
for every truly human culture. From it alone can arise all the
great works of mankind, which bring the founder little reward,
but the richest blessings to posterity. Yes, from it alone can we
understand how so many are able to bear up faithfully under a
scanty life which imposes on them nothing but poverty and frugal-
ity, but gives the community the foundations of its existence.
Every worker, every peasant, every inventor, official, etc., who
works without ever being able to achieve any happiness or
prosperity for himself, is a representative of this lofty idea, even
if the deeper meaning of his activity remains hidden in him.

What applies to work as the foundation of human sustenance
and all human progress is true to an even greater degree for the
defense of man and his culture. In giving one’s own life for the
existence of the community lies the crown of all sense of sacrifice.
It is this alone that prevents what human hands have built from
being overthrown by human hands or destroyed by Nature.

Our own German language possesses a word which magnifi-
cently designates this kind of activity: PjlichterfUllung (fulfill-
ment of duty) ; it means not to be self-sufficient but to serve the
community.

The basic attitude from which such activity arises, we call —
to distinguish it from egoism and selfishness — idealism. By this
we understand only the individual’s capacity to make sacrifices
for the community, for his fellow men.

How necessary it is to keep realizing that idealism does not

Idealism and Knowledge

299

represent a superfluous expression of emotion, but that in truth
it has been, is, and will be, the premise for what we designate as
human culture, yes, that it alone created the concept of ‘man’!
It is to this inner attitude that the Aryan owes his position in
this world, and to it the world owes man; for it alone formed from
pure spirit the creative force which, by a unique pairing of the
brutal fist and the intellectual genius, created the monuments of
human culture.

Without his idealistic attitude all, even the most dazzling
faculties of the intellect, would remain mere intellect as such —
outward appearance without inner value, and never creative force.

But, since true idealism is nothing but tbe subordination of the
interests and life of the individual to the co mmun ity, and this in
turn is the precondition for the creation of organizational forms
of all kinds, it corresponds in its innermost depths to the ultimate
win of Nature. It alone leads men to voluntary recognition of
the privilege of force and strength, and thus makes them into a
dust particle of that order which shapes and forms the whole
universe.

The purest idealism is unconsciously equivalent to the deepest
knowledge.

How correct this is, and how little true idealism has to do with
playful flights of the imagination, can be seen at once if we let
the unspoiled chUd, a healthy boy, for example, judge. The same
boy who feels like throwing up ^ when he hears the tirades of a
pacifist ‘idealist’ is ready to give his young life for the ideal of
his nationality.

Here the instinct of knowledge unconsciously obeys the deeper
necessity of the preservation of the species, if necessary at the
cost of the individual, and protests against the visions of the
pacifist windbag who in reality is nothing but a cowardly, though
camouflaged, egoist, transgressing the laws of development; for
development requires willingness on the part of the individual^ to
sacrifice himself for the community, and not the sickly imagining a
of cowardly know-it-alls and critics of Nature.

^ Second edition has: ‘who is hostile and without understanding.’

300

Meik Kampf

Especially, therefore, at times when the ideal attitude threatens
to disappear, we can at once recognize a diminution of that force
which forms the community and thus creates the premises of
culture. As soon as egoism becomes the ruler of a people, the
bands of order are loosened and in the chase after their own
happiness men fall from heaven into a real heU.

Yes, even posterity forgets the men who have only served their
own advantage and praises the heroes who have renounced their
own happiness.

* * *

The mightiest counterpart to the Aryan is represented by the
Jew. In hardly any people in the world is the instinct of self-
preservation developed more strongly than in the so-caUed
‘chosen.’ Of this, the mere fact of the survival of this race may
be considered the best proof. Where is the people which in the
last two thousand years has been exposed to so slight changes of
inner disposition, character, etc., as the Jewish people? What
people, finally, has gone through greater upheavals than this
one — and nevertheless issued from the mightiest catastrophes
of mankind unchanged? WTiat an infinitely tough will to live
and preserve the species speaks from these facts!

The mental qualities of the Jew have been schooled in the
course of many centuries. Today he passes as ‘smart,’ and this in
a certain sense he has been at all times. But his intelligence is
not the result of his own development, but of visual instruction
through foreigners. For the human mind cannot climb to the
top without steps; for every step upward he needs the founda-
tion of the past, and this in the comprehensive sense in which it
can be revealed only in general culture. All thinking is based
only in small part on man’s own knowledge, and mostly on the
experience of the time that hj^ preceded. The general cultural
level provides the individual man, without his noticing it as
a rule, with such a profusion of preliminary knowledge that, thus

Consequences of Jewish Egotism

301

armed, he can more easily take further steps of his own. The boy
of today, for example, grows up among a truly vast number of
technical acquisitions of the last centuries, so that he takes for
granted and no longer pays attention to much that a hundred
years ago was a riddle to even the greatest min ds, although for
following and imderstanding our progress in the field in question
it is of decisive importance to him. If a very genius from the
twenties of the past century should suddenly leave his grave
today, it would be harder for him even intellectually to find his
way in the present era than for an average boy of fifteen today.
For he would lack all the infinite preliminary education which
our present contemporary unconsciously, so to speak, assimilates
while growing up amidst the manifestations of our present
general civilization.

Since the Jew — for reasons which will at once become appar-
ent — was never in possession of a culture of his own, the foun-
dations of his intellectual work were always provided by others.
His intellect at all times developed through the cultural world
surrounding him.

The reverse process never took place.

For if the Jewish people’s instinct of self-preservation is not
smaller but larger than that of other peoples, if his intellectual
faculties can easily arouse the impression that they are equal to
the intellectual gifts of other races, he lacks completely the most
essential requirement for a cultured people, the idealistic attitude.

In the Jewish people the will to self-sacrifice does not go beyond
the individual’s naked instinct of self-preservation. Their appar-
ently great sense of solidarity is based on the very primitive
herd instinct that is seen in many other living creatures in this
world. It is a noteworthy fact that the herd instinct leads to
mutual support only as long as a common danger makes this
seem useful or inevitable. The same pack of wolves which has
just fallen on its prey together disintegrates when hunger abates
into its individual beasts. The same is true of horses which try
to defend themselves against an assailant in a body, but scatter
again as soon as the danger is past.

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Meis Kampe

It is similar with the Jew. His sense of sacrifice is only ^par-
ent. It exists only as long as the existence of the individual makes
it absolutely nectary. However, as soon as the common enemy
is conquered, the dange>- threatening all averted and the booty
hidden, the apparent harmony of the Jews among themselves
ceases, again making waj' for their old causal ^ tendencies. Ihe
Jew is only united when a common danger forces him to be or
a ojinmon booty entices him; if these two grounds are larking,
the qualitis of the crassest egoism come into their own, and in
the twinkling of an eye the united people trims into a horde of
rats, fighting bloodily among themselves.

If the Jews were alone in this world, they would stifle in filth
and oflal; they would tiy to get ahead of one another in hate-
filled struggle and e.xterminate one another, in so far as the ab-
solute absence of afl sense of self-sacrifice, expressing itself in
their cowardice, did not turn battle into comedy here too.

So it is absolutely wrong to infer any ideal sense of sacrifice
in the Jews from the fact that they stand together in struggle, or,
better expressed, in the plundering of their fellow men.

Here again the Jew is led by nothing but the naked egoism of
the individual.

That is why the Jewish state — which should be the living
organism for preserving and increasing a race — is completely
unlimited as to territory. For a state formation to have a definite
spatial setting always presupposes an idealistic attitude on the
part of the state-race, and especially a correct interpretation of
the concept of work. In the exact measure in which this attitude
is lacking, any attempt at forming, even of preserving, a spatially
delimited state fads. And thus the basis on which alone culture
can arise is lacking.

Hence the Jewish people, despite all apparent intellectual
quahties, is without any true culture, and especially without any
culture of its own. For what sham culture the Jew today pos-

* ‘uTsachlieh vorkandene Ajdagen.’ ‘Ursdchlich’ is no doubt intended as a
refinement of ‘ursprunglick’ (oripnaily). The phrase would then readi
‘their originally existing tendencies.’

Sham Culture of the Jew

303

sesses is the property of other peoples, and for the most part it
is ruined in his hands.

In judging the Jewish people’s attitude on the question of
human culture, the most essential characteristic we must always
bear in mind is that there has never been a Jewish art and ac-
cordingly there is none today either; that above aU the two queens
of all the arts, architecture and music, owe nothing original to
the Jews. What they do accomplish in the field of art is either
patchwork or intellectual theft. Thus, the Jew lacks those
qualities which distinguish the races that are creative and hence
culturally blessed.

To what an extent the Jew takes over foreign culture, imitating
or rather ruining it, can be seen from the fact that he is mostly
found in the art which seems to require least original invention,
the art of acting. But even here, in reality, he is only a ‘juggler,’
or rather an ape; for even here he lacks the last touch that is
required for real greatness; even here he is not the creative genius,
but a superficial imitator, and all the twists and tricks that he
uses are powerless to conceal the inner lifelessness of his creative
gift. Here the Jewish press most lovingly helps him along by
raising such a roar of hosannahs about even the most mediocre
bungler, just so long as he is a Jew, that the rest of the world
actually ends up by thinking that they have an artist before
them, while in truth it is only a pitiful comedian.

No, the Jew possesses no culture-creating force of any sort,
since the idealism, without which there is no true higher devel-
opment of man, is not present in him and never was present.
Hence his intellect will never have a constructive effect, but will
be destructive, and in very rare cases perhaps will at most be
stimulating, but then as the prototype of the ‘force which always
wants evil and nevertheless creates good.’ ^ Not through him
does any progress of mankind occur, but in spite of him.

Since the Jew never possessed a state with definite territorial
limits and therefore never called a culture his own, the concep-
tion arose that this was a people which should be reckoned among

^ Goethe’s Faust, lines 1336-1337 ; Menhistopheles to Faust

304

Mein Kampf

the ranks of the nomads. This is a fallacy as great as it is danger-
ous. The nomad does possess a definitely limited living space,
only he does not cultivate it like a sedentary peasant, but lives
from the yield of his herds with which he wanders about in his
territory. The outward reason for this is to be found in the small
fertility of a soil which simply does not permit of settlement.
The deeper cause, however, lies in the disparity between the
technical culture of an age or people and the natural poverty of
a living space. There are territories in which even the Aryan is
enabled only by his technology, developed in the course of more
than a thousand years, to live in regular settlements, to master
broad stretches of soil and obtain from it the requirements of
life. If he did not possess this technology, either he would have
to avoid these territories or likewise have to struggle along as
a nomad in perpetual wandering, provided that his thousand-
year-old education and habit of settled residence did not make
this seem simply unbearable to him. We must bear in mind
that in the time when the American continent was being opened
up, niunerous Aryans fought for their livelihood as trappers,
hunters, etc., and often in larger troops with wife and children,
always on the move, so that their existence was completely like
that of the nomads. But as soon as their increasing number
and better implements permitted them to clear the wild soil and
make a stand against the natives, more and more settlements
sprang up in the land.

Probably the Aryan was also first a nomad, settling in the
course of time, but for that very reason he was never a Jew!
No, the Jew is no nomad; for the nomad had also a definite atti-
tude toward the concept of work which could serve as a basis
for his later development in so far as the necessary intellectual
premises were present. In him the basic idealistic view is present,
even if in infinite dilution, hence in his whole being he may sepm
strange to the Aryan peoples, but not unattractive. In the Jew,
however, this attitude is not at all present; for that reason he
was never a nomad, but only and always a parasite in the body of
other peoples. That he sometimes left his previous living space

The Jew a Parasite

305

has nothing to do with his own purpose, but results from the
fact that from time to time he was thrown out by the host
nations he had misused. His spreading is a typical phenomenon
for all parasites; he always seeks a new feeding ground for his
race.

This, however, has nothing to do with nomadism, for the reason
that a Jew never thinks of leaving a territory that he has occu-
pied, but remains where he is, and he sits so fast that even by
force it is very hard to drive him out. His extension to ever-new
countries occurs only in the moment in which certain conditions
for his existence are there present, without which — unlike the
nomad — he would not change his residence. He is and remains
the t3^ical parasite, a sponger who like a noxious bacillus keeps
spreading as soon as a favorable medium invites him. And the
effect of his existence is also like that of spongers: wherever he
appears, the host people dies out after a shorter or longer period.

Thus, the Jew of all times has lived in the states of other
peoples, and there formed his own state, which, to be sure,
habitually sailed under the disguise of ‘religious community’ as
long as outward circumstances made a complete revelation of
his nature seem inadvisable. But as soon as be felt strong enough
to do without the protective doak, he always dropped the veil
and suddenly became what so many of the others previously
did not want to believe and see: the Jew.

The Jew’s life as a parasite in the body of other nations and
states explains a characteristic which once caused Schopenhauer,
as has already been mentioned, to call him the ‘great master in
lying.’ Existence impels the Jew to lie, and to lie perpetually,
just as it compels the inhabitants of the northern countries to
wear warm clothing.

His life within other peoples can only endure for any length of
time if he succeeds in arousing the opinion that he is not a people
but a ‘religious community,’ though of a special sort.

And this is the first great lie.

In order to carry on his existence as a parasite on other peoples,
he is forced to deny his inner nature. The more intelligent the

306

Mein Kampf

individual Jew is, the more he will succeed in this deception.
Indeed, thin gs can go so far that large parts of the host people
win end by seriously believing that the Jew is really a French-
man or an Eng li s hma n, a German or an Italian, though of a
special religious faith. Especially state authorities, which always
sppm animated by the historical fraction of wisdom, most easily
fall a victim to this infinite deception. Independent thinking
sometimes seems to these circles a true sin against holy advance-
ment, so that we may not be surprised if even today a Bavarian
state minis try, for example, still has not the faintest idea that
the Jews are members of a people and not of a ‘religion’ though a
glance at the Jew’s own newspapers should indicate this even to
the most modest mind. The Jewish Echo is not yet an official
organ, of course, and consequently is unauthoritative as far as
the intelligence of one of these government potentates is con-
cerned.

The Jew has always been a people with definite racial char-
acteristics and never a religion; only in order to get ahead he
early sought for a means which could distract unpleasant atten-
tion from his person. And what would have been more expedient
and at the same time more innocent than the ‘embezzled’ con-
cept of a religious community? For here, too, everything is bor-
rowed or rather stolen. Due to his own original special natme,
the Jew cannot possess a religious institution, if for no other
reason because he lacks idealism in any form, and hence belief
in a hereafter is absolutely foreign to him. And a religion in the
Aryan sense cannot be imagined which lacks the conviction of
survival after death in some form. Indeed, the Talmud is not a
book to prepare a man for the hereafter, but only for a practical
and profitable life in this world.

The Jewish religious doctrine consists primarily in prescriptions
for keeping the blood of Jewry pure and for regulating the relation
of Jews among themselves, but even more with the rest of the
world; in other words, with non-Jews. But even here it is by
no means ethical problems that are involved, but extremely
modest economic ones. Concerning the moral value of Jewish

Jewish Religious Doctrine

307

religious instruction, there are today and have been at all times
rather exhaustive studies (not by Jews; the drivel of the Jews
themselves on the subject is, of course, adapted to its purpose)
which make this kind of religion seem positively monstrous ac-
cording to Aryan conceptions. The best characterization is pro-
vided by the product of this religious education, the Jew him self.
His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien
to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous
was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the
latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people,
and when necessary he even took to the whip to drive from the
temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then
as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his busi-
ness existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while
our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging
for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political
swindles with atheistic Jewish parties — and this against their
own nation.

On this first and greatest lie, that the Jews are not a race but
a religion, more and more lies are based in necessary consequence.
Among them is the lie with regard to the language of the Jew.
For him it is not a means for expressing his thoughts, but a means
for concealing them. When he speaks French, he thinks Jewish,
and while he turns out German verses, in his life he only expresses
the nature of his nationality. As long as the Jew has not become
the master of the other peoples, he must speak their languages
whether he likes it or not, but as soon as they became his slaves,
they would all have to learn a universal language (Esperanto, for
instance!), so that by this additional means the Jews could more
easily dominate them!

To what an extent the whole existence of this people is based
on a continuous lie is shown incomparably by the Protocols of the
Wise Men of Zion, so infinitely hated by the Jews. They are
based on a forgery, the Frankfurter Zeihing moans and screams
once every week: the best proof that they are authentic. What
many Jews may do unconsciously is here consciously exposed.

308

Mein Kampp

And that is what matters. It is completely indifferent from what
Jewish brain these disclosures originate; the important thing is
that with positively terrifying certainty they reveal the nature
and activity of the Jewish people and expose their inner contexts
as well as their ultimate final aims. The best criticism applied
to them, however, is reality. Anyone who examines the historical
development of the last hundred years from the standpoint of
this book will at once understand the screaming of the Jewish
press. For once this book has become the common property of
a people, the Jewish menace may be considered as broken.

* * *

The best way to know the Jew is to study the road which he
has taken within the body of other peoples in the course of the
centuries. It suffices to follow this up in only one example, to
arrive at the necessary realizations. As his development has
always and at all times been the same, just as that of the peoples
corroded by him has also been the same, it is advisable in such
an examination to divide his development into definite sections
which in this case for the sake of simplicity I designate alpha-
betically. The first Jews came to ancient Germany in the course
of the advance of the Romans, and as always they came as mer-
chants. In the storms of the migrations, however, they seem to
have disappeared again, and thus the time of the first Germanic
state formation may be viewed as the beginning of a new and
this time lasting Jewification of Central and Northern Europe.
A development set in which has always been the same or similar ,
wherever the Jews encountered Aryan peoples.

* * *

fa) With the appearance of the first fixed settlement, the Jew
is suddenly ‘at hand,’ He comes as a merchant and at first at-

Development or Jewry

309

taches little importance to the concealment of his nationality.
He is still a Jew, partly perhaps among other reasons because the
outward racial difference between himself and the host people
is too great, his linguistic knowledge still too small, and the
cohesion of the host people too sharp for him to dare to try to
appear as anything else than a foreign merchant. With his dex-
terity and the inexperience of his host people, the retention of
his character as a Jew represents no disadvantage for him, but
rather an advantage; the stranger is given a friendly reception.

fb) Gradually he begins slowly ^ to become active in economic
life, not as a producer, but exclusively as a middleman. With
his thousand-year-old mercantile dexterity he is far superior to
the still helpless, and above all boundlessly honest, Aryans, so
that in a short time commerce threatens to become his monopoly.
He begins to lend money and as always at usurious interest.
As a matter of fact, he thereby introduces interest. The danger
of this new institution is not recognized at first, but because of
its momentary advantages is even welcomed.

(c) The Jew has now become a steady resident; that is, he
settles special sections of the cities and villages and more and
more constitutes a state within a state. He regards commerce as
well as all financial transactions as his own special privilege
which he ruthlessly exploits.

(d) Finance and commerce have become his complete monop-
oly. His usurious rates of interest finally arouse resistance, the
rest of his increasing effrontery indignation, his wealth envy.
The cup is full to overflowing when he draws the soil into the
sphere of his commercial objects and degrades it to the level of a
commodity to be sold or rather traded. Since he himself never
cultivates the soil, but regards it only as a property to be ex-
ploited on which the peasant can well remain, though amid the
most miserable extortions on the part of his new master, the
aversion against him gradually increases to open hatred. His
blood-sucking tyranny becomes so great that excesses against
him occur. People begin to look at the foreigner more and more

‘ AllmUhlich beginnt er sich langsam . .

310

Mein Kampe

closely and discover more and more repulsive traits and char-
acteristics in him nntil the deft becomes unbridgeable.

At times of the bitterest distress, fury against him finally
breaks out, and the plundered and ruined masses begin to defend
themselves against the scourge of God. In the course of a few
centuries they have come to know him, and now they feel that
the mere fact of his existence is as bad as the plague.

(e) Now the Jew begins to reveal his true qualities. With
repulsive flattery he approaches the governments, puts his money
to work, and in this way always manages to secure new license
to plunder his victims. Even though the rage of the people some-
times flares high against the eternal blood-sucker, it does not in
the least prevent him from reappearing in a few years in the
place he had hardly left and beginning the old life all over again.
No persecution can deter him from his tj’pe of human exploita-
tion, none can drive him away; after every persecution he is
back again in a short time, and just the same as before.

To prevent the very worst, at least, the people begin to with-
draw the soil from his usurious hands by making it legally im-
possible for him to acquire soil.

(f) Proportionately as the power of the princes begins to
mount, he pushes closer and closer to them. He begs for ‘patents ’
and ‘privileges,’ which the lords, always in financial straits, are
^d to give him for suitable payment. However much this may
cost him, he recovers the money he has spent in a few years
through interest and compound interest. A true blood-sucker
that attaches himself to the body of the unhappy people and can-
not be picked ofi until the princes themselves again need money
and with their own exalted hand tap off the blood he has sucked
from them.

This game is repeated again and again, and in it the idle of the
so-called ‘German princes’ is just as miserable as that of the
Jews themselves. These lords were really God’s punishment for
their beloved peoples and find their parallels only in the various
ministers of the present time.

It is thanks to the German princes that the German nation

Development oe Jewry

311

was unable to redeem itself for good from the Jewish menace.
In this, too, unfortunately, nothing changed as time went on; aU
they obtained from the Jew was the thousandfold reward for the
sins they had once committed against their peoples. They made
a pact with the devil and landed in hell.

(g) And so, his ensnarement of the princes leads to their ruin.
Slowly but surely their relation to the peoples loosens in the
measure in which they cease to serve the people’s interests and
instead become mere exploiters of their subjects. The Jew well
knows what their end will be and tries to hasten it as much as
possible. He himself adds to their financial straits by alienating
them more and more from their true tasks, by crawling aroimd
them with the vilest flattery, by encouraging them in vices, and
thus making himself more and more indispensable to them. With
his deftness, or rather unscrupulousness, in all money matters he
is able to squeeze, yes, to grind, more and more money out of the
plundered subjects, who in shorter and shorter intervals go the
way of all flesh. Thus every court has its ‘court Jew’ — as the
monsters are called who torment the ‘beloved people’ to despair
and prepare eternal pleasures for the princes. Who then can be
surprised that these ornaments of the human race ended up by
being ornamented, or rather decorated, in the literal sense, and
rose to the hereditary nobility, helping not only to make this
institution ridiculous, but even to poison it?

Now, it goes without saying, he can really make use of his
position for his own advancement.

Finally he needs only to have himself baptized to possess him-
self of aU the possibilities and rights of the natives of the country.
Not seldom he concludes this deal to the joy of the churches over
the son they have won and of Israel over the successful swindle.

(h) Within Jewry a change now begins to take place. Up till
now they have been Jews; that is, they attach no importance to
appearing to be something else, which they were unable to do,
an3rway, because of the very distinct racial characteristics on
both sides. At the time of Frederick the Great it stiH entered no
one’s head to regard the Jew as anything else but a ‘foreign’

312

Mein Kampe

people, and Goethe was still horrified at the thought that in future
marriage between Christians and Jews would no longer be for-
bidden by law. And Goethe, by God, was no reactionary, let
alone a helot; ^ what spoke out of him was only the voice of the
blood and of reason. Thus — despite all the shameful actions of
the courts — the people instinctively saw in the Jew a foreign
element and took a corresponding attitude toward him.

But now all this was to change. In the course of more than a
thousand years he has learned the language of the host people to
such an extent that he now thinks he can venture in future to
emphasize his Judaism less and place his ‘Germanism’ more in
the foreground; for ridiculous, nay, insane, as it may seem at
first, he nevertheless has the effrontery to turn ‘Germanic,’ in
this case a ‘ German.’ With this begins one of the most infamous
deceptions that anyone could conceive of. Since of Germanism he
possesses really nothing but the art of stammering its language
— and in the most frightful way — but apart from this has never
mixed with the Germans, his whole Germanism rests on the
language alone. Race, however, does not lie in the language, but
exclusively in the blood, which no one knows better than the Jew,
who attaches very little importance to the preservation of his
language, but all importance to keeping his blood pure. A man
can change his language without any trouble — that is, he can use
another language; but in his new language he will express the old
ideas; his inner nature is not changed. This is best shown by the
Jew who can speak a thousand languages and nevertheless re-
mains a Jew. His traits of character have remained the same,
whether two thousand years ago as a grain dealer in Ostia, speak-
ing Roman, or whether as a flour profiteer of today, jabbering
German with a Jewish accent. It is always the same Jew. That
this obvious fact is not understood by a ministerial secretary or
higher police official is also self-evident, for there is scarcely any
creature with less instinct and intelligence running around in the
world today than these servants of our present model state au-
thority.

' Corrected in second edition to ‘zealot’

Development of Jewry

313

The reason why the Jew decides suddenly to become a ‘ Ger-
man ’ is obvious. He feels that the power of the princes is slowly
tottering and therefore tries at an early time to get a platform
beneath his feet. Furthermore, his hnancial domination of the
whole economy has advanced so far that without possession of aU
‘civil’ rights he can no longer support the gigantic edifice, or at
any rate, no further inaease of his influence is possible. And he
desires both of these; for the higher he climbs, the more alluring
his old goal that was once promised him rises from the veil of the
past, and with feverish avidity his keenest minds see the dream of
world domination tangibly approaching. And so his sole effort
is directed toward obtaining full possession of ‘civil’ rights.

This is the reason for his emancipation from the ghetto.

(i) So from the court Jew there gradually develops the people’s
Jew, which means, of course: the Jew remains as before in the
entourage of the high lords; in fact, he tries to push his way even
more mto their circle; but at the same time another part of his
race makes friends with the ‘beloved people.’ If we consider how
greatly he has sinned against the masses in the course of the cen-
turies, how he has squeezed and sucked their blood again and
again; if furthermore, we consider how the people gradually
learned to hate him for this, and ended up by regarding his exist-
ence as nothing but a punishment of Heaven for the other peo-
ples, we can understand how hard this shift must be for the Jew,
Yes, it is an arduous task suddenly to present himself to his
flayed victims as a ‘friend of mankind.’

First, therefore, he goes about making up to the people for his
previous sins against them. He begins his career as the ‘bene-
factor’ of mankind. Since his new benevolence has a practical
foundation, he cannot very well adhere to the old Biblical recom-
mendation, that the left hand should not know what the right
hand giveth; no, whether he likes it or not, he must reconcile
himself to letting as many people as possible know how deeply
he feels the sufferings of the masses and all the sacrifices that he
himself is making to combat them. With this ‘modesty’ which is
inborn in him, he blares out his merits to the rest of the world

314

Mein Kanpf

until p>eople really begin to believe in them. Anyone who does
not believe in them is doing him a bitter injustice. In a short time
he begins to twist things around to make it look as if aU the in-
justice in the world had always been done to him and not the
other way around. The very stupid believe this and then they
just can’t heJp but pity the poor ‘unfortunate.’

In addition, it should be remarked here that the Jew, despite
aU his love of sacrifice, naturally never becomes personally im-
poverished. He knows how to manage; sometimes, indeed, his
charity is really comparable to fertilizer, which is not strewn on
the field for love of the field, but with a view to the fanner’s own
future benefit. In any case, everyone knows in a comparatively
short time that the Jew has become a ‘benefactor and friend
of mankind.’ What a strange transformation!

But what is more or less taken for granted in others arouses
the greatest astonishment and in many distinct admiration for
this very reason. So it happens that he gets much more credit
for every such action than the rest of mankind, in whom it is
taken for granted.

But even more: all at once the Jew also becomes liberal and
begins to rave about the necessary progress of mankind.

Slowly he makes himself the spokesman of a new era.

Also, of course, he destroys more and more thoroughly the
foundations of any economy that will really benefit the people.
By way of stock shares he pushes his way into the circuit of na-
tional production which he turns into a purchasable or rather
tradable object, thus robbing the enterprises of the foxmdations
of a personal ownership. Betw-een employer and employee there
arises that inner estrangement which later leads to political class
division.

Finally, the Jewish influence on economic affmrs gtavrs with
terrifying speed through the stock exchange. He becomes
the owner, or at least the controller, of the national labor
force.

To strengthen his political position he tries to tear down the
racial and civil barriers which for a time continue to restrain him

Development op Jewry

315

at every step. To this end he fights with all the tenacity innate
in him for religious tolerance — and in Freemasonry, which has
succumbed to him completely, he has an excellent instrument
with which to fight for his aims and put them across. The govern-
ing circles and the higher strata of the political and economic
bourgeoisie are brought into his nets by the strings of Free-
masonry, and never need to suspect what is happening.

Only the deeper and broader strata of the people as such, or
rather that class which is beginning to wake up and fight for its
rights and freedom, cannot yet be sufficiently taken in by these
methods. But this is more necessary than anything else; for the
Jew feels that the possibility of his rising to a dominant role
exists only if there is someone ahead of him to clear the way; and
this someone he thinks he can recognize in the bourgeoisie, in
their broadest strata in fact. The glovemakers and linen weavers,
however, cannot be caught in the fine net of Freemasonry; no, for
them coarser but no less drastic means must be employed. Thus,
Freemasonry is joined by a second weapon in the service of the
Jews: the press. With all his perseverance and dexterity he seizes
possession of it. With it he slowly begins to grip and ensnare, to
guide and to push all public life, since he is in a position to create
and direct that power which, under the name of ‘public opinion,’
is better known today than a few decades ago.

In this he always represents himself personally as having an
infinite tMrst for knowledge, praises all progress, mostly, to be
sure, the progress that leads to the ruin of others; for he judges
all knowledge and aU development only according to its pos-
sibilities for advancing his nation, and where this is lacking, he is
the inexorable mortal enemy of all light, a hater of all true culture.
He uses all the knowledge he acquires in the schools of other peo-
ples, exclusively for the benefit of his race.

And this nationality he guards as never before. While he seems
to overflow with ‘enlightenment,’ ‘progress,’ ‘freedom,’ ‘human-
ity,’ etc., he himself practices the severest segregation of his race.
To be sure, he sometimes palms off his women on influential
Christians, but as a matter of principle he always keeps his male

316

Mein Kampf

line pure. He poisons the blood of others, but preserves his own.
The Jew almost never marries a Christian woman; it is the Chris-
tian who marries a Jewess. The bastards, however, take after the
Jewish side. Especially a part of the high nobility degenerates
completely. The Jew is perfectly aware of this, and therefore
systematically carries on this mode of ‘disarming’ the intellectual
leader class of his racial adversaries. In order to mask his activity
and lull his victims, however, he talks more and more of the
equality of all men without regard to race and color. The fools
begin to believe him.

Since, however, his whole being still has too strong a smell of
the foreign for the broad masses of the people in particular to fall
readily into his nets, he has his press give a picture of him which
is as little in keeping with reality as conversely it serves his de-
sired purpose. His comic papers especially strive to represent the
Jews as a harmless little people, with their own peculiarities, of
course — like other peoples as well — but even in their gestures,
which seem a little strange, perhaps, giving signs of a possibly
ludicrous, but always thoroughly honest and benevolent, soul.
And the constant effort is to make him seem almost more ‘in-
significant’ than dangerous.

His ultimate goal in this stage is the victory of ‘democracy,’ or,
as he vmderstands it: the rule of parliamentarianism. It is most
compatible with his requirements; for it excludes the personality
— and puts in its place the majority characterized by stupidity,
incompetence, and last but not least, cowardice.

The final result will be the overthrow of the monarchy, which
is now sooner or later bound to occur.

(j) The tremendous economic development leads to a change
in the social stratification of the people. The small craftsman
slowly dies out, and as a result the worker’s possibility of achiev-
ing an independent existence becomes rarer and rarer; in conse-
quence the worker becomes visibly proletarianized. There arises
the industrial ‘ factory worker ’ whose most essential characteristic
is to be sought in the fact that he hardly ever is in a position to
found an existence of his own in later life. He is propertyless in

The Factory Worker

317

the truest sense of the word. His old age is a torment and can
scarcely be designated as living.

Once before, a similar situation was created, which pressed
urgently for a solution and also found one. The peasants and
artisans had slowly been joined by the officials and salaried
workers — particularly of the state — as a new class. They, too,
were propertyless in the truest sense of the word. The state
finally found a way out of this unhealthy condition by assuming
the care of the state employee who could not himself provide for
his old age; it introduced the pension. Slowly, more and more
enterprises followed this example, so that nearly every regularly
employed brain-worker draws a pension in later life, provided the
concern he works in has achieved or surpassed a certain size.
Only by safeguarding the state official in his old age could he be
taught the selfless devotion to duty which in the pre-War period
was the most eminent quality of German officialdom.

In this way a whole class that had remained propertyless was
wisely snatched away from social misery and articulated with
the body of the people.

Now this question again, and this time on a much larger scale,
faced the state and the nation. More and more masses of people,
numbering millions, moved from peasant villages to the larger
cities to earn their bread as factory workers in the newly estab-
lished industries. The working and living conditions of the new
class were more than dismal. If nothing else, the more or less
mechanical transference of the old artisan’s or even peasant’s
working methods to the new form was by no means suitable.
The work done by these men could not be compared with the
exertions which the industrial factory worker has to perform. In
the old handicraft, this may not have been very important, but
in the new working methods it was all the more so. The formal
transference of the old working hours to the industrial large-scale
enterprise was positively catastrophic, for the actual work done
before was but little in view of the absence of our present in-
tensive working methods. Thus, though previously the fourteen-
or even fifteen-hour working day had been bearable, it certainly

318

Mein Kampe

ceased to be bearable at a time wiieii eveiy mmute was exploited
to the fullest. The result of this senseless transference of the old
working houre to the new industrial activity was really unfortu-
nate in two respects: the worker’s health was undermined and his
faith in a higher justice destroyed. To this finally was added the
miserable wages on the one hand and the employer’s correspond-
ingly and ob\'iously so vastly superior position on the other.

In the country there could be no social question, since master
and hired hand did the same work and above all ate out of the
same bow'ls. But this, too, changed.

The separation of worker and employer now seems complete in
all fields of life. How far the inner Judaization of our people has
progressed can be seen from the small respect, if not contempt,
that is accorded to manual labor. This is not German. It took
the foreignization of our life, which was in truth a Jewification,
to transform the old respect for manual work into a certain con-
tempt for all physical labor.

Thus, there actually comes into being a new class enjo3dng
very little respect, and one day the question must arise whether
the nation would possess the strength to articulate the new das
into general society, or whether the social difierence would
broaden into a daslike deavage.

But one thing is certain: the new dass did not count the worst
elements in its ranks, but on the contrary definitely the most
energetic elements. The overrefinements of so-called culture had
not yet exerted their disintegrating and destructive effects. The
broad mass of the new class was not yet infected with the poison
of pacifist weakness; it was robust and if nec^sary even brutal.

WTfile the bourgeoisie is not at all concerned about this all-
important question, but indifferently lets thingj; slide, the Jew
seizes the unlimited opporUmity it offers for the future; while on
the one hand he organizes capitalistic methods of human ex-
ploitation to their ultimate consequence, he ^pioaches thp very
victuns of his spirit and his activity and in a short time becomes
the leader of their struggle against himself. ‘Against himself’ is
only figuratively sp eakin g; for the great master of lies understands

Jewish Tactics

319

as always how to make himself appear to be the pure one and to
load the blame on others. Since he has the gall to lead the masses,
it never even enters their heads that this might be the most in-
famous betrayal of aU times.

And yet it was.

Scarcely has the new class grown out of the general economic
shift than the Jew, clearly and distinctly, realizes that it can open
the way for his own further advancement. First, he used the
bourgeoisie as a battering-ram against the feudal world, then the
worker against the bourgeois world. If formerly he knew how to
swindle his way to civil rights in the shadow of the bourgeoisie,
now he hopes to find the road to his own domination in the
worker’s struggle for existence.

From now on the worker has no other task but to fight for the
future of the Jewish people. Unconsciously he is harnessed to the
service of the power which he thinks he is combating. He is seem-
ingly allowed to attack capital, and this is the easiest way of mak-
ing him fight for it. In this the Jew keeps up an outcry against
international capital and in truth he means the national economy
which must be demolished in order that the international stock
exchange can triumph over its dead body.

Here the Jew’s procedure is as follows:

He approaches the worker, simulates pity with his fate, or even
indignation at his lot of misery and poverty, thus gaining his
cgnfidence. He takes pains to study all the various real or
imaginary hardships of his life — and to arouse his longing for a
change in such an existence. '•Wi^ infinite shrewdness he fans
the need for social justice, somehow slumbering in every Aryan
man, into hatred against those who have been better favored by
fortune, and thus gives the struggle for the elimination of social
evils a very definite philosophical stamp. He establishes the
Marxist doctrine.

By presenting it as inseparably bound up with a number of
socially just demands, he promotes its spread and conversely the
aversion of decent people to fulfill demands which, advanced in
such form and company, seem from the outset unjust and impos-

320

Mein Kampe

sible to fulfill. For under this doak of purely sodal ideas truly
diabolic purposes are hidden, yes, they are publicly proclaimed
•with the most insolent frankness. This theory represents an
inseparable mixture of reason and human madness, but always
in such a way that only the lunacy can become reality and never
the reason. By the categorical rejection of the personality and
hence of the nation and its radal content, it destroys the ele-
mentary foundations of all human culture which is dependent on
just these factors. This is the true inner kernel of the Marxist
philosophy in so far as this figment of a criminal brain can be
designated as a ‘philosophy.’ With the shattering of the per-
sonality and the race, the essential obstade is removed to the
domination of the inferior being — and this is the Jew.

Precisely in political and economic madness lies the sense of
this doctrine. For this prevents aU truly intelligent people from
entering its service, while those who are intellectually less active
and poorly educated in economics hasten to it ■with flying colors.
The intellectuals for this movement — for even this movement
needs intellectuals for its existence — are ‘sacrificed’ by the Jew
from his own ranks./,

Thus there arises a pure movement entirely of manual workers
imder Jewish leadership, apparently aiming to improve the situa-
tion of the worker, but in truth planning the enslavement and
■with it the destruction of aU non- Jewish peoples.

The general pacifistic paralysis of the national instinct of self-
preservation begun by Freemasonry in the circles of the so-called
intelligentsia is transmitted to the broad masses and above all to
the bourgeoisie by the activity of the big papers which today are
always Jewish. Added to these two weapons of disintegration
comes a third and by far the most terrible, the organization of
brute force. As a shock and storm troop, Marxism is intended to
finish off what the preparatory softening up with the first two
weapons has made ripe for collapse.

Here we ha^ve teamwork that is positively brilliant — and we
need really not be surprised if in confronting it those ■very in-
stitutions which always like to represent themselves as the pillars

Organization of Marxist World Doctrine 321

of a more or less legendary state authority hold up least. It is in
our high and highest state officialdom that the Jew has at aU times
(aside from a few exceptions) found the most compliant abettor of
his work of disintegration. Cringhig submissiveness to superiors
and high-handed arrogance to inferiors distinguish this class to
the same degree as a narrow-mindedness that often cries to high
Heaven and is only exceeded by a self-conceit that is sometimes
positively amazing.

And these are qualities that the Jew needs in our authorities
and loves accordingly.

The practical struggle which now begins, sketched in broad
outlines, takes the following course:

In keeping with the ultimate aims of the Jewish struggle,
which are not exhausted in the mere economic conquest of the
world, but also demand its political subjugation, the Jew divides
the organization of his Marxist world doctrine into two halves
which, apparently separate from one another, in truth form an
inseparable whole: the political and the trade-union move-
ment.

The trade-union movement does the recruiting. In the hard
struggle for existence which the worker must carry on, thanks
to the greed and shortsightedness of many employers, it offers
him aid and protection, and thus the possibility of winning better
living conditions. If, at a time when the organized national com-
munity, the state, concerns itself with him little or not at all, the
worker does not want to hand over the defense of his vital human
rights to the blind caprice of people who in part have little sense
of responsibility and are often heartless to boot, he must take
their defense into his own hands. In exact proportion as the so-
called national bourgeoisie, blinded by financial interests, sets
the heaviest obstacles in the path of this struggle for existence
and not only resists all attempts at shortening the inhumanly
long working day, abolishing child labor, safeguarding and pro-
tecting the woman, improving sanitary conditions in the work-
shops and homes, but often actually sabotages them, the shrewder
Jew takes the oppressed people under his wing. Gradually he b^

322

Mein Kampf

comes the leader of the trade-union movement, all the more easily
as he is not interested in really eliminating social evils in an honest
sense, but only in training an economic storm troop, blindly de-
voted to him, with which to destroy the national economic in-
dependence. For while the conduct of a healthy social policy
will consistently move between the aims of preserving the na-
tional health on the one hand and safeguarding an independent
national economy on the other, for the Jew in his struggle these
two criteria not only cease to exist, but their elimination, among
other things, is his life goal. He desires, not the preservation of
an independent national economy, but its destruction. Conse-
quently, no pangs of conscience can prevent him as a leader of
the trade-union movement from raising demands which not only
overshoot the goal, but whose fulfillment is either impossible for
practical purposes or means the ruin of the national economy.
Moreover, he does not want to have a healthy, sturdy race before
him, but a rickety herd capable of being subjugated. This desire
again permits him to raise demands of the most senseless kind
whose practical fulfillment he himself knows to be impossible and
which, therefore, could not lead to any change in things, but at
most to a wild incitement of the masses. And that is what he is
interested in and not a true and honest improvement of social
conditions.

Hence the Jewish leadership in trade-union affairs remains
uncontested until an enormous work of enlightenment influences
the broad masses and sets them right about their never-ending
misery, or else the state disposes of the Jew and his work. For as
long as the insight of the masses remains as slight as now and the
state as indifferent as today, these masses will always be first to
follow the man who in economic matters offers the most shamp1f;fis
promises. And in this the Jew is a master. For in his entire ac-
tivity he is restrained by no moral scruples!

And so he inevitably drives every competitor in this sphere
from the field in a short time. In keeping with all his inner
rapacious brutahty, he at once teaches the trade-union move-
ment the most brutal use of violence. If anyone by his intelli-

Organization of Marxist World Doctrine 323

gence resists the Jewish lures, his defiance and understanding
are broken by terror. The success of such an activity is
enormous.

Actually the Jew by means of the trade union, which could be
a blessing for the nation, shatters the foundations of the national
economy.

Parallel with this, the political organization advances.

It plays hand in glove with the trade-union movement, for the
latter prepares the masses for political organization, in fact,
lashes them into it with violence and coercion. Furthermore, it
is the permanent financial source from which the political or-
ganization feeds its enormous apparatus. It is the organ con-
trolling the political activity of the individual and does the pan-
dering in aU big demonstrations of a political nature. In the end
it no longer comes out for political interests at all, but places its
chief instrument of struggle, the cessation of work in the form of
a mass and general strike, in the service of the political idea.

By the creation of a press whose content is adapted to the in-
tellectual horizon of the least educated people, the political and
trade-union organization finally obtains the agitational institu-
tion by which the lowest strata of the nation are made ripe for
the most reckless acts. Its function is not to lead people out of
the swamp of a base mentality to a higher stage, but to cater to
their lowest instincts. Since the masses are as mentally lazy as
they are sometimes presumptuous, this is a business as specula-
tive as it is profitable.

It is this press, above all, which wages a positively fanatical and
slanderous struggle, tearing down everything which can be re-
garded as a support of national independence, cultural elevation,
and the economic independence of the nation.

Above all, it hammers away at the characters of all those who
will not bow down to the Jewish presumption to dominate, or
whose ability and genius in themselves seem a danger to the Jew.
For to be hated by the Jew it is not necessary to combat him; no,
it suffices if he suspects that someone might even conceive the
idea of combating him some time or that on the strength of his

324

Mein Kampe

superior genius he is an augmenter of the power and greatness of a
nationality hostile to the Jew.

His unfailing instinct in such thing s scents the original soul *
in everyone, and his hostility is assured to anyone who is not spirit
of his spirit. Since the Jew is not the attacked but the attacker,
not only anyone who attacks passes as his enemy, but also any-
one who resists him. But the means with which he seeks to break
such reckless but upright souls is not honest warfare, but lies and
slander.

Here he stops at nothing, and in his vileness he becomes so
gigantic that no one need be surprised if among our people the
personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the
living shape of the Jew.

The ignorance of the broad masses about the inner nature of
the Jew, the lack of instinct and narrow-mindedness of our upper
classes, make the people an easy victim for this Jewish campaign
of lies.

While from innate cowardice the upper classes turn away from
a man whom the Jew attacks with lies and slander, the broad
masses from stupidity or simplicity believe everything. The state
authorities either doak themselves in silence or, what usually
happens, in order to put an end to the Jewish press campaign,
they persecute the unjustly attacked, which, in the eyes of such
an official ass, passes as the preservation of state authority and
the safeguarding of law and order.

Slowly fear of the Marxist weapon of Jewry descends like a
nightmare on the mind and soul of decent people.

They begin to tremble before the terrible enemy and thus have
become his final victim.

The Jew’s domination in the state seems so assured that now
not only can he call himself a Jew again, but he ruthlessly admits
his ultimate national and political designs. A section of his race
openly owns itself to be a foreign people, yet even here they lie.
For while the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe
that the national consdousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction

1 ‘die vrsprUngliche Seek.’

Dictatorship op the Proletariat

325

in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe
the dumb Goyim} It doesn’t even enter their heads to build up a
Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they
want is a central organi2ation for their international world
swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed
from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted
scoundrels and a university for budding crooks.

It is a sign of their rising confidence and sense of security that
at a time when one section is stiU playing the German, French-
man, or Englishman, the other with open effrontery comes out as
the Jewish race.

How close they see approaching victory can be seen by the
hideous aspect which their relations with the members of other
peoples takes on.

With Satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth
lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his
blood, thus stealing her from her people. With every means he
tries to destroy the racial foundations of the people he has set
out to subjugate. Just as he himself systematically ruins women
and girls, he does not shrink back from pulling down the blood
barriers for others, even on a large scale. It was and it is Jews
who bring the Negroes into the Rhineland, always with the same
secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race by
the necessarily resulting bastardization, throwing it down from
its cultural and political height, and himself rising to be its
master.

For a racially pure people which is conscious of its blood can
never be enslaved by the Jew. In this world he will forever be
master over bastards and bastards alone.

And so he tries systematically to lower the racial level by a
continuous poisoning of individuals.

And in politics he begins to replace the idea of democracy by
the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In the organized mass of Marxism he has found the weapon
which lets him dispense with democracy and in its stead allows

^ Yiddish for Gentiles.

326

Mein Kakpf

tiim to subjugate and govern the peoples with a dictatorial and
brutal fist.

' He works systematically for revolutionization in a twofold
sense: economic and political.

Around peoples who offer too violent a resistance to attack
from within he weaves a net of enemies, thanks to his interna-
tional influence, incites them to war, and finally, if necessary,
plants the flag of revolution on the very battlefields.

In economics he undermines the states until the social enter-
prises which have become unprofitable are taken from the state
and subjected to bis financial control.

In the political field he refuses the state the means for its self-
preservation, destroys the foundations of aU national self-main-
tenance and defense, destroys faith in the leadership, scoffs at its
history and past, and drags everything that is truly great into
the gutter.

Culturally he contaminates art, literature, the theater, makes
a mockery of natural feeling, overthrows all concepts of beauty
and sublimity, of the noble and the good, and instead drags men
down into the sphere of his own base nature.

Religion is ridiculed, ethics and morality represented as out-
moded, until the last props of a nation in its struggle for existence
in this world have fallen.

(e) * Now begins the great last revolution. In gaining political
power the Jew casts off the few cloaks that he still wears. The
democratic people’s Jew becomes the blood-Jew and tyrant over
peoples. In a few years he tries to exterminate the national in-
telligentsia and by robbing the peoples of their natural intel-
lectual leadership makes them ripe for the slave’s lot of per-
manent subjugation.

The most frightful example of this kind is offered by Russia,
where he killed or starved about thirty nuUion people with posi-
tively fanatical savagery, in part amid inhuman tortures, in order
to give a gang of Jewish journalists and stock exchange bandits
domination over a great people,

* The writer has lost track of his letters. Second edition has (i).

Bastardized Peoples

327

The end is not only the end of the freedom of the peoples op-
pressed by the Jew, but also the end of this parasite upon the
nations. After the death of his victim, the vampire sooner or
later dies too.

* # *

If we pass all the causes of the German collapse in review, the
ultimate and most decisive remains the failure to recognize the
racial problem and especially the Jewish menace.

The defeats on the battlefield in August, 1918, would have been
child’s play to bear. They stood in no proportion to the victories
of our people. It was not they that caused our downfall; no, it
was brought about by that power which prepared these defeats
by systematically over many decades robbing our people of the
political and moral instincts and forces which alone make nations
capable and hence worthy of existence.

In heedlessly ignoring the question of the preservation of the
racial foundations of our nation, the old Reich disregarded the
sole right which gives life in this world. Peoples which bastardize
themselves, or let themselves be bastardized, sin against the will
of eternal Providence, and when their ruin is encompassed by a
stronger enemy it is not an injustice done to them, but only the
restoration of justice. If a people no longer wants to respect the
Nature-given qualities of its being which root in its blood, it has
no further right to complain over the loss of its earthly existence.

Everything on this earth is capable of improvement. Every
defeat can become the father of a subsequent victory, every lost
war the cause of a later resurgence, every hardship the fertiliza-
tion of human energy, and from every oppression the forces for
a new spiritual rebirth can come — as long as the blood is pre-
served pure.

The lost purity of the blood alone destroys inner happiness
forever, plunges man into the abyss for all time, and the conse-
quences can never more be eliminated from body and spirit.

328

Mein Kampe

Only by examining and comparing aU other problems of life in
the light of this one question shall we see how absurdly petty
they are by this standard. They are all limited in time — but the
question of preserving or not preserving the purity of the blood
will endure as long as there are men.

AU reaUy sig nifican t symptoms of decay of the pre-War period
can in the last analysis be reduced to racial causes.

Whether we consider questions of general justice or cankers
of economic life, symptoms of cultural decline or processes of
political degeneration, questions of faulty schooling or the bad
influence exerted on grown-ups by the press, etc., everywhere and
always it is fundamentally the disregard of the racial needs of
our own people or failure to see a foreign racial menace.

And that is why aU attempts at reform, all works for social
reUef and political exertions, aU economic expansion and every
apparent increase of inteUectual knowledge were futile as far as
their results were concerned. The nation, and the organism which
enables ^ and preserves its life on this earth, the state, did not
grow inwardly healthier, but obviously languished more and
more. AU the illusory prosperity of the old Reich could not hide
its iimer weakness, and every attempt reaUy to strengthen the
Reich failed again and again, due to disregarding the most im-
portant question.

It would be a mistake to beUeve that the adherents of the vari-
ous poUtical tendencies which were tinkering aroimd on the
German national body — yes, even a certain section of the lead-
ers — were bad or malevolent men in themselves. Their activity
was condemned to steriUty only because the best of them saw at
most the forms of our general disease and tried to combat them,
but blindly ignored the virus. Anyone who systematicaUy fol-
lows the old Reich’s line of poUtical development is bormd to ar-
rive, upon calm examination, at the realization that even at the
time of the unification, hence the rise of the German nation, the
jrmer decay was already in fuU swing, and that despite aU ap-

^ ‘ Die N ation und ihr das Lebea auf dieser Erde b^Skigtnder und erhaltender
Organismta.’

Failure to Recognize the Inner Enemy 329

parent political successes and despite increasing economic wealth,
the general situation was deteriorating from year to year. If
nothing else, the elections for the Reichstag announced, with their
outward swelling of the Marxist vote, the steadily approaching
inward and hence also outward collapse. All the successes of the
so-called bourgeois parties were worthless, not only because even
with so-called bourgeois electoral victories they were unable to
halt the numerical growth of the Marxist flood, but because they
themselves above all now bore the ferments of decay in their own
bodies. Without suspecting it, the bourgeois world itself was in-
wardly infected with the deadly poison of Marxist ideas and its
resistance often sprang more from the competitor’s envy of am-
bitious leaders than from a frmdamental rejection of adversaries
determined to fight to the utmost. In these long years there was
only one who kept up an imperturbable, unflagging fight, and
this was the Jew. His Star of David ^ rose higher and higher in
proportion as our people’s will for self-preservation vanished.

Therefore, in August, 1914, it was not a people resolved to at-
tack which rushed to the battlefield; no, it was only the last
flicker of the national instinct of self-preservation in face of the
progressing pacifist-Marxist paralysis of our national body.
Since even in these days of destiny, our people did not recognize
the inner enemy, aU outward resistance was in vain and Provi-
dence did not bestow her reward on the victorious sword, but
followed the law of eternal retribution.

On the basis of this inner realization, there took form in our new
movement the leading principles as well as the tendency, which
m our conviction were alone capable, not only of halting the de-
cline of the German people, but of creating the granite foundation
upon which some day a state will rest which represents, not an
alien mechanism of economic concerns and interests, but a na-
tional organism;

A Germanic Stale of the
German Nation

* Typical Hitlerian metaphor. The Star of David, it will be remembered,
is not a star, but a shield.

CHAPTER

XII

The First Period of Development of the
National Socialist German Workers' Party

It at the end of this volume I describe the
first period in the development of our movement and briefly dis-
cuss a number of questions it raises, my aim is not to give a dis-
sertation on the spiritual aims of the movement. The aims and
tasks of the new movement are so gigantic that they can only
be treated in a special volume. In a second volume, therefore,
I shall discuss the programmatic foundations of the movement in
detail and attempt to draw a picture of what we conceive of under
the word ‘state.’ By ‘us’ I mean all the hundreds of thousands
who fundamentally long for the same thing without as individuals
finding the words to describe outwardly^ what they inwardly
visualize; for the noteworthy fact about aU reforms is that at
first they possess but a single champion yet many million sup-
porters. Their aim has often been for centuries the inner longing
of hundreds of thousands, until one man stands up to proclaim
such a general will, and as a standard-bearer gmdes the old long-
ing to victory in the form of the new idea.

The fact that millions bear in their hearts the desire for a
basic change in the conditions obtmning today proves the deep
discontent imder which they suffer. It expresses itself in thou-
sandfold manifestations, with one in despair and hopelessness,
with another in iU will, anger, and indignation; with this man in
indifference, and with that man in furious excesses. As witnesses

^ ‘Outwardly ’ omitted in second edition.

Situation After the Revolution

331

to this inner dissatisfaction we may consider those who are weary
of elections as well as the many who tend to the most fanatiral
extreme of the Left.

The young movement was intended primarily to appeal to
these last. It is not meant to constitute an organization of the
contented and satisfied, but to embrace those tormented by
suffering, those without peace, the imhappy and the discontented,
and above all it must not swim on the surface of a national body,
but strike roots deep within it. ^

* * *

In purely political terms, the following picture presented itself
in 1918 : a people tom into two parts. The one, by far the smaller,
includes the strata of the national intelligentsia, excluding aU the
physically active. It is outwardly national, yet under this word
can conceive of nothing but a very insipid and weak-kneed de-
fense of so-caUed state interests, which in turn seem identical with
d 3 mastic interests. They attempt to fight for their ideas and
aims with spiritual weapons which are as fragmentary as they
are superficial, and which fail completely in the face of the
enemy's brutality. With a single frightful blow this class, which
only a short time before was still governing, is stretched on the
ground and with trembling cowardice suffers every humiliation
at the hands of the ruthless victor.

Confronting it is a second class, the broad mass of the laboring
population. It is organized in more or less radical Marxist move-
ments, determined to break all spiritual resistance by the power
of violence. It does not want to be national, but consciously
rejects any promotion of national interests, just as, conversely,
it aids and abets all foreign oppression. It is numerically the
stronger and above all comprises all those elements of the nation
without which a national resurrection is unthinkable and im-
possible.

For in 1918 this much was clear: no resurrection of the German

332

Mein Kampf

people can occur except through the recovery of outward power.
But the prerequisites for this are not arms, as our bourgeois
‘ statesmen ’ keep prattling, but the forces of the will. The German
people had more than enough arms before. They were not able
to secure freedom because the energies of the national instinct
of self-preservation, the will for self-preservation, were lacking.
The best weapon is dead, worthless material as long as the spirit
is lacking which is ready, willing, and determined to use it.
Germany became defenseless, not because arms were lacking,
but because the will was lacking to guard the weapon for
national survival.

If today more than ever our Left politicians are at pains to
point out the lack of arms as the necessary cause of their spine-
less, compliant, actually treasonous policy, we must answer only
one thing: no, the reverse is true. Through your anti-national,
criminal policy of abandoning national interests, you surrendered
our arms. Now you attempt to represent the lack of arms as the
xmderlying cause of your miserable villainy. This, like every-
thing you do, is lies and falsification.

But this reproach applies just as much to the politicians on
the Right. For, thanks to their miserable cowardice, the Jewish
rabble that had come to power was able in 1918 to steal the
nation’s arms. They, too, have consequently no ground and no
right to palm off our present lack of arms as the compelling
ground for their wily caution (read ‘ cowardice ’) ; on the contrary,
our defenselessness is the consequence of their cowardice.

Consequently the question of regaining German power is not:
How shall we manufacture arms? but: How shall we manufacture
the spirit which enables a people to bear arms? If this spirit
dominates a people, the will finds a thousand ways, every one
of which ends in a weapon! But give a coward ten pistols and if
attacked he will not be able to fire a single shot. And so for him
they are more worthless than a knotted stick for a courageous
man.

The question of regaining our people’s political power is
primarily a question of recovering our national instinct of sdf-

Recovery oe Political Power

333

preservation, if for no other reason because experience shows
that any preparatory foreign policy, as well as any evaluation of
a state as such, takes its cue less from the existing weapons than
from a nation’s recognized or presumed moral capacity for re-
sistance. A nation’s ability to form alliances is determined much
less by dead stores of existing arms than by the visible presence
of an ardent national will for self-preservation and heroic death-
defying courage. For an alliance is not concluded with arms but
with men. Thus, the English nation will have to be considered
the most valuable ally in the world as long as its leadership and
the spirit of its broad masses justify us in expecting that brutality
and perseverance which is determined to fight a battle once
begun to a victorious end, with every means and without con-
sideration of time and sacrifices; and what is more, the military
armament existing at any given moment does not need to stand
in any proportion to that of other states.

If we understand that the resurrection of the German nation
represents a question of regaining our political will for self-
preservation, it is also clear that this cannot be done by winning
elements which in point of will at least are already national, but
only by the nationalization of the consciously anti-national
masses.

A young movement which, therefore, sets itself the goal of
resurrecting a German state with its own sovereignty will have
to direct its fight entirely to winning the broad masses. Wretched
as our so-called ‘national bourgeoisie’ is on the whole, inadequate
as its national attitude seems, certainly from this side no serious
resistance is to be expected against a powerful domestic and
foreign policy in the future. Even if the German bourgeoisie,
for their well-known narrow-minded and short-sighted reasons,
should, as they once did toward Bismarck, maintain an obstinate
attitude of passive resistance in the hour of coming liberation —
an active resistance, in view of their recognized and proverbial
cowardice, is never to be feared.

It is different with the masses of our internationally minded
comrades. In their natural primitiveness, they are more indii^

m

Msm KA3tPF

to the idea of vkSence, and, moreover, their Jevi^ kadership is
more bratal and ruthless. They trill crush an^ German lesorrec-
fion jost as thev ona; broke the backbone of the Geimaa army.
But above aii: in this state with its parfiamentary govemment
thej' will, thanks to their majority in numbers, not only olKtrict
any national foreign polity, but also make impossfbie any higher
estimation of the German strength, thus making us seem unde-
sirable as an ally. For not only are we ourselves aware of the
element of weakness Ijdog in our fifteen million ilardsts, demo-
crats, padfists. and Centrists; it is recognized e\‘en more by
foreign countries, which measure the value of a possible alliance
with us according to the weight of this burden. Xo one allies
himself with a state in which the attitude of the active part of
the {Xjpulation toward any determined foreign p)olicy is passive,
to say the least

To this we mast add the fact that the leaderships of these
parties of national treason must and will be hostile to any resur-
rection. out of mere instinct of self-preservation. Historically it
is just not conceivable that the German people could recover its
former position without settling accounts with those who were
the cause and occasion of the unprecedented collapse which
struck oar state. For before the judgment seat of posterity
November, 1918, wili be evaluated, not as high treason, but as
treason against the fatherland.^

Thus, any fjossibility of regaining outward German independ-
ence is bound up first and foremost with the recovery of the inner
unity of our people's will.

But regarded even from the purely technical point of view,
the idea of an outward German liberation seems senseless as long
as the broad mass^ are not also prepared to enter the service
of this liberating idea. From the purely military angle, every
officer above all will realize after a moment’s thought that a

^ ‘Hockserrat’ (high treason) is an offense against the government or con-
stitution; Lafidesserrai’ (treason against the fatherland) consists of mil-
itaiy betrayal (mutiny, desertion, betrayal of secrets to the enemy, etc.),
and is a far graver offense.

Winning the Bhoad Masses

335

foreign struggle cannot be carried on with student battalions,
that in addition to the brains of a people, the fists are also needed.
In addition, we must bear in mind that a national defense, which
is based only on the circles of the so-called intelligentsia, would
squander irreplaceable treasures. The absence of the young
German intelligentsia which found its death on the fields of
Flanders in the fall of 1914 was sorely felt later on. It was the
highest treasure that the German nation possessed and during
the War its loss could no longer be made good. Not only is it
impossible to carry on the struggle itself if the storming battal-
-.ons do not find the masses of the workers in their ranks; the
technical preparations are also impracticable without the inner
unity of our national wiU. Especially our people, doomed to
languish along unarmed beneath the thousand eyes of the Ver-
sailles peace treaty, can only make technical preparations for the
achievement of freedom and human independence if the army
of domestic stoolpigeons is decimated down to those whose
inborn lack of character permits them to betray anything and
everything for the well-known thirty pieces of silver.^ For with
these we can deal. Unconquerable by comparison seem the mil-
lions who oppose the national resurrection out of political con-
viction — unconquerable as long as the inner cause of their op-
position, the international Marxist philosophy of life, is not
combated and torn out of their hearts and brains.

Regardless, therefore, from what standpoint we examine the
possibility of regaining our state and national independence,
whether from the standpoint of preparations in the sphere of
foreign policy, from that of technical armament or that of battle
itself, in every case the presupposition for everything remains the
previous w inning of the broad masses of our people for the idea
of our national independence.

Without the recovery of our external freedom, however, any

1 As the thought seems too complicated to be true, 1 dte the German:
‘ . . . wenn das Heer innerer Spitsd auf di^enigen desimiert wird, denen ange~
borene Charakierlosigflkdt geslaua,fur die bekannten dm SUherlinge aUes imd
jedes zu verraten'

336

Mein Kampf

internal reform, even in the most favorable case, means only the
increase of our productivity as a colony. The surplus of aU so-
called economic improvements falls to the benefit of our inter-
national control commissions, and every social improvement at
best raises the productivity of our work for them. No cultural
advances will fall to the share of the German nation; they are
too contingent on the political independence and dignity of our
nation.

Thus, if a favorable solution of the German future requires a
national attitude on the part of the broad masses of our people,
this must be the highest, mightiest task of a movement whose
activity is not intended to exhaust itself in the satisfaction of the
moment, but which must examine all its commissions and omis-
sions solely with a view to their presumed consequences in the
future.

Thus, by 1919 we clearly realized that, as its highest aim, the
new movement must first accomplish the nationalization of the
masses.

From a tactical standpoint a number of demands resulted
from this.

(1) To win the masses for a national resurrection, no sodal
sacrifice is too great.

Whatever economic concessions are made to our working class
today, they stand in no proportion to the gain for the entire
nation if they help to give the broad masses back to their nation.
Only pigheaded short-sightedness, such as is often unfortunately
formd in our employer circles, can fail to recognize that in the
long run there can be no economic upswing for them and hence
no economic profit, unless the inner national solidarity of our
people is restored.

If during the War the German unions had ruthlessly guarded
the interests of the working dass, if even during the War they
had struck a thousand times over and forced approval of the
demands of the workers they represented on the dividend-hungry
employers of those days; but if in matters of national defense
they had avowed their Germanism with the same fanaticism;

Nationalization of the Masses

337

and if with equal ruthlessness they had given to the fatherland
that which is the fatherland’s, the War would not have been lost.
And how trifling all economic concessions, even the greatest,
would have been, compared to the immense importance of win-
ning the War!

Thus a movement which plans to give the German worker
back to the German people must clearly realize that in this ques-
tion economic sacrifices are of no importance whatever as long
as the preservation and independence of the national economy
are not threatened by them.

(2) The national education of the broad masses can only take
place indirectly through a social uplift, since thus exclusively
can those general economic premises be created which permit the
individual to partake of the cultural goods of the nation.

(3) The nationalization of the broad masses can never be
achieved by half-measures, by weakly emphasizing a so-called
objective standpoint, but only by a ruthless and fanatically one-
sided orientation toward the goal to be achieved. That is to say,
a people cannot be made ‘national’ in the sense imderstood by
our present-day bourgeoisie, meaning with so and so many limi-
tations, but’only nationalistic with the entire vehemence that is
inherent in the extreme. Poison is countered only by an antidote,
and only the shallowness of a bourgeois mind can regard the
middle course as the road to heaven.

The broad masses of a people consist neither of professors nor
of diplomats. The scantiness of the abstract knowledge they
possess directs their sentiments more to the world of feeling.
That is where their positive or negative attitude lies. It is re-
ceptive only to an expression of force in one of these two direc-
tions and never to a half-measure hovering between the two.
Their emotional attitude at the same time conditions their
extraordinary stability. Faith is harder to shake than knowledge,
love succumbs less to change than respect, hate is more enduring
than aversion, and the impetus to the mightiest upheavals on
this earth has at all times consisted less in a scientific knowledge
dominating the masses than in a fanaticism which inspired

338

Mein Kampp

them and sometimes in a h 3 ^teria which drove them forward.

Anyone who wants to win the broad masses must know the
key that opens the door to their heart. Its name is not objec-
tivity (read weakness), but will and power.

(4) The soul of the people can only be won if along with carry-
ing on a positive struggle for our own aims, we destroy the
opponent of these aims.

The people at aU times see the proof of their own right in ruth-
less attack on a foe, and to them renouncing the destruction of
the adversary seems like uncertainty with regard to their own
right if not a sign of their owm unright.

The broad masses are only a piece of Nature and their senti-
ment does not imderstand the mutual handshake of people who
rlaiin that they want the opposite things. WTiat they desire is
the victory of the stronger and the destruction of the weak or
his unconditional subjection.

The nationalization of our masses will succeed only when, aside
from all the positive struggle for the soul of our people, their
international poisoners are exterminated.

(5) All great questions of the day are questions of the moment
and represent only consequences of definite causes. Only one
among all of them, however, possesses causal importance, ‘ and that
is the question of the racial preservation of the nation. In the
blood done resides the strength as well as the weakness of man.
As long as peoples do not recognize and give heed to the impor-
tance of their racial foundation, they are like men who would like
to teach poodles the qualities of greyhounds, f ailing to realize that
the speed of the greyhound like the docility of the poodle are not
learned, but are qualities inherent in the race. Peoples which
renounce the preservation of their racial purity renounce with it
the unity of their soul in all its expressions. The divided state
of their nature is the natural consequence of the divided state of
their blood, and the change in their intellectual and creative
force is only the effect of the change in their racial foimdations.

Anyone who wants to free the German blood from the mani-

^ ' ursahliche Bedeutung.’

Nationalization of the Masses

339

festations and vices of today, which were originally alien to its
nature, will first have to redeem it from the foreign virus of these
manifestations.

Without the clearest knowledge of the racial problem and
hence of the Jewish problem there will never be a resurrection of
the German nation.

The racial question gives the key not only to world history,
but to all human culture.

(6) Organizing the broad masses of our people which are today
in the international camp into a national people’s community
does not mean renouncing the defense of justified class interests.
Divergent class and professional interests are not synonymous
with class cleavage, but are natural consequences of our eccH
nomic life. Professional grouping is in no way opposed to a true
national community, for the latter consists in the unity of a
nation in all those questions which affect this nation as such.

The integration of an occupational group which has become
a class with the national community, or merely with the state,
is not accomplished by the lowering of higher classes but by
uplifting the lower classes. This process in turn can never be
upheld by the higher class, but only by the lower class fighting
for its equal rights. The present-day bourgeoisie was not organ-
ized into the state by measures of the nobility, but by its own
energy under its own leadership.

The German worker will not be raised to the framework of the
German national community via feeble scenes of fraternization,
but by a conscious raising of his social and cultural situation
until the most serious differences may be viewed as bridged. A
movement which sets this development as its goal will have to
take its supporters primarily from this camp.^ It may fall back
on the intelligentsia only in so far as the latter has completely
understood the goal to be achieved. This process of transforma-
tion and equalization will not be completed in ten or twenty
years; experience shows that it comprises many generations.

The severest obstacle to the present-day worker’s approach to

1 Changed in second edition to 'the workers’ camp.’

340

Meijt Kampi

the riafional rnminnnity lies Qot in the defense of h^ class inter-
ests, but in bis intenatiooal leadership and attitude whidi are
hratDe to the people and the fatherland. The same umons with a
fanatical national leadership in politicid and national matters
would iTiahff millions of woriers into the most valuable members
of their laation legardlras of the various stru^es that took place
over purely economic matters.

A mo\'em.ent which wants honestly to give the German worker
back to his petple and tear him away from the intematioDal de-
Iifflon must sharply attack a conception dominant above all in
employer circles, which vmder national community understands
the unresisting economic surrender of the emplo>'ee to the em-
ployer and which chooses to regard any attempt at saf^uarding
even justified interests r^arding the employee’s economic exist-
ence as an attack on the national conlnlunit^^ Such an assertion
is not only untrue, but a conscious lie, because the national com-
munity impose its obligations not only on one side but also on
the other.

Just as surely as a worker sins against the spirit of a real
national community when, without regard for the common wel-
fare and the suivival of a national economy, he uses his power to
raise extortionate demands, an emploj^er breaks this community
to the same extent when he conducts his business in an inhnma-n ,
exploiting way. misuses the national labor force and makes mil-
lions out of its sweat- He then ha.^ no right to designate himself
as national, no right to speak of a national communitj'; no, he is
a selfish sasundrel who induces social unrest and provokes future
conSicts which whatever happens must end in harming, the
natioru

Thus, the reservoir from which the young movement mutt
gather its siipporters will primarily be the maggpa of our workers.
Its work will be to tear th^ away from the international delu-
sion, to free the m from th^ sodal distress, to raise thpm out of
their cultural miseiy and lead them to the natinnal community as
a valuable, united &ctor, national in feeling and desire.

If, in the ciicies of the national int elligentsia^ there are found

Nationalization of the Masses

341

men with the warmest hearts for their people and its future, im-
bued with the deepest knowledge of the importance of this
struggle for the soul of these masses, they will be highly welcome
in the ranks of this movement, as a valuable spiritual backbone.
But winning over the bourgeois voting cattle can never be the
aim of this movement. If it were, it would burden itself with a
dead weight which by its whole nature would paralyze our power
to recruit from the broad masses. For regardless of the theoreti-
cal beauty of the idea of leading together the broadest masses
from below and from above within the framework of the move-
ment, there is the opposing fact that by psychological propa-
gandizing of bourgeois masses in general meetings, it may be
possible to create moods and even to spread insight, but not to
do away with qualities of character or, better expressed, vices,
whose development and origin embrace centuries. The difference
with regard to the cultural level on both sides and the attitude
on both sides toward questions raised by economic interests is
at present still so great that, as soon as the intoxication of the
meetings has passed, it would at once manifest itself as an
obstacle.

Finally, the goal is not to undertake a restratification in the
camp that is national to begin with, but to win over the anti-
national camp.

And this point of view, finally, is determining for the tactical
attitude of the whole movement.

(7) This one-sided but thereby dear position must express itself
in the propaganda of the movement and on the other hand in
turn is required on propagandist grounds.

If propaganda is to be effective for the movement, it must be
addressed to only one quarter, since otherwise, in view of the
difference in the intellectual training of the two camps in ques-
tion, either it will not be rmderstood by the one group, or by the
other it would be rejected as obvious and therefore uninteresting.

Even the style and the tone of its individual products cannot
be equally effective for two such extreme groups. If propaganda
renounces primitiveness of expression, it does not find its way to

342

Mein Kampe

the feeling of the broaxl masses. If, however, in word and ges-
ture, it uses the masses’ harshness of sentiment and expression,
it wUl be rejected by the so-called intelligentsia as coarse and
vulgar. Among a hundred so-called speakers there are hardly
ten capable of speaking with equal effect today before a public
consisting of street-sweepers, locksmiths, sewer-cleaners, etc.,
and tomorrow holding a lecture with necessarily the same thought
content in an auditorium full of university professors and stu-
dents. But among a thousand speakers there is perhaps only a
single one who can manage to speak to locksmiths and xmiversity
professors at the same time, in a form which not only is suitable
to the receptivity of both parties, but also influences both parties
with equal effect or actually lashes them into a wild storm of
applause. We must always bear in mind that even the most
beautiful idea of a sublime theory in most cases can be dissemi-
nated only through the small and smallest minds. The important
thing is not what the genius who has created an idea has in
mind, but what, in what form, and with what success the proph-
ets of this idea transmit it to the broad masses.

The strong attractive power of the Social Democracy, yes, of
the whole Marxist movement, rested in large part on the homo-
geneity and hence one-sidedness of the public it addressed. The
more seemingly limited, indeed, the narrower its ideas were, the
more easily they were taken up and assimilated by a mass whose
intellectual level corresponded to the material offered.

Likewise for the new movement a simple and dear line thus
resulted;

Propaganda must be adjusted to the broad masses in content
and in form, and its soundness is to be measured exdusively by
its effective result.

In a mass meeting of all dasses it is not that speaker who is
mentally closest to the intellectuals present who speaks best, but
the one who conquers the heart of the maj^spR

A member of the intelligentsia present at such a meeting, who
carps at the intellectual level of the speech despite the speaker’s
obvious effect on the lower strata he has set out to conquer.

Nationalization of the Masses

343

proves the complete incapacity of his thinking and the worthless-
ness of his person for the young movement. It can use only that
intellectual who comprehends the task and goal of the movement
to such an extent that he has learned to judge the activity of
propaganda according to its success and not according to the
impressions which it leaves behind in himself. For propaganda is
not intended to provide entertainment for people who are
national-minded to begin with, but to win the enemies of our
nationality, in so far as they are of our blood.

In general those trends of thought which I have briefly summed
up under the heading of war propaganda should be determining
and decisive for our movement in the manner and execution of its
own enlightenment work.

That it was right was demonstrated by its success.

(8) The goal of a political reform movement will never be
reached by enlightenment work or by influencing ruling circles,
but only by the achievement of political power. Every world-
moving idea has not only the right, but also the duty, of securing,
those means which make possible the execution of its ideas.
Success is the one earthly judge concerning the right or wrong of
such an effort, and under success we must not understand, as
in the year 1918, the achievement of power in itself, but an exer-
cise of that power that will benefit the nation. Thus, a coup
d’etat must not be regarded as successful if, as senseless state’s
attorneys in Germany think today, the revolutionaries have suc-
ceeded in possessing themselves of the state power, but only if,
by the realization of the purposes and aims underlying such a
revolutionary action, more benefit accrues to the nation than
under the past regime. Something which cannot very well be
claimed for the German revolution, as the gangster job of autiunn,
1918, caUs itself.

If the achievement of political power constitutes the precondi-
tion for the practical execution of reform purposes, the move-
ment with reform purposes must from the first day of its existence
feel itself a movement of the masses and not a literary tea-club
or a shopkeepers’ bowling society.

344

Mein Kampf

(9) The young movement is in its nature and inner organiza-
tion anti-parliamentarian; that is, it rejects, in general and in
its own inner structure, a principle of majority rule in which the
leader is degraded to the level of a mere executant of other people’s
win and opinion. In little as well as big things, the movement ad-
vocates the principle of a Germanic democracy: the leader is
elected, but then enjojrs unconditional authority.

The practical consequences of this principle in the movement
are the following:

The first chairman of a local group is elected, but then he is
the responsible leader of the local group. All committees are
subordinate to him and not, conversely, he to a committee.
There are no electoral committees, but only committees for
work. The responsible leader, the first chairman, organizes the
work. The first principle applies to the next higher organization,
the precinct, the district or county. The leader is always elected,
but thereby he is vested with unlimited powers and authority.
And, finally, the same applies to the leadership of the whole
party. The chairman is elected, but he is the exclusive leader of
the movement.^ All committees axe subordinate to him and not

^This is one of the few passages the sense of which has been radically
changed in the second edition. By the time of the appearance of the second
edition, Hitler had emerged victorious from the factional conflicts within the
party. His authority was now uncontested. In the second edition the pas-
sage reads:

‘The young movement is in its nature and inner organization anti-parlia-
mentarian; that is, it rejects in general and in its own inner structure, a
principle of majority rule in which the leader is degraded to the level of a
mere executant of other people’s will and opinion. In little as well as big
things, the movement advocates the principle of unconditional authority of
the leader, coupled with the highest responsibility.

‘The practical consequences of this principle in the movement are the
following:

‘The first chairman of a local group is appointed by the next highest
leader; he is the responsible leader of the local group. All committees are
subordinate to him and not, conversely, he to a conunittee. There are no
electoral committees, but only committees for work. The responsible
leader, the first chairman, organizes the work. The first principle applies to

Neither Monarchist Nor Republican

345

he to the committees. He makes the decisions and hence bears the
responsibility on his shoulders. Members of the movement are
free to call him to account before the forum of a new election,
to divest him of his office in so far as he has infringed on the
principles of the movement or served its interests badly. His
place is then taken by an abler, new man, enjoying, however,
the same authority and the same responsibility.

It is one of the highest tasks of the movement to make this
principle determining, not only within its own ranks, but for
the entire state.

Any man who wants to be leader bears, along with the highest
unlimited authority, also the ultimate and heaviest responsi-
bility.

Anyone who is not equal to this or is too cowardly to bear
the consequences of his acts is not fit to be leader; only the hero
is cut out for this.

The progress and culture of humanity are not a product of the
majority, but rest exclusively on the genius and energy of the
personality.

To cultivate the personality and establish it in its rights is
one of the prerequisites for recovering the greatness and power
of our nationality.

Hence the movement is anti-parliamentarian, and even its
participation in a parliamentary institution can only imply activ-
ity for its destruction, for eliminating an institution in which
we must see one of the gravest symptoms of mankind’s decay.

(10) The movement decisively rejects any position on questions
which either lie outside the frame of its political work or, being
not of basic importance, are irrelevant for it. Its task is not a
religious reformation, but a political reorganization of our people.
In both religious denominations it sees equally valuable pillars

the next higher organization, the precinct, the district or county. The
leader is always appointed from above and at the same time vested with
unlimited powers and authority. Only the leader of the whole party is
elected, in a general membership meeting compatible with the laws govern-
ing associations. But he is the exclu»ve leader of the movement.’

346

Mein Kamfe

for the existence of our people and therefore combats those parties
which want to degrade this foundation of an ethical, moral, and
religious consolidation of our national body to the level of an
instrument of their party interests.

The movement finally sees its task, not in the restoration of a
definite state form and in the struggle against another, but in
the creation of those basic foundations without which neither
republic nor monarchy can endure for any length of time. Its
mission lies not in the foundation of a monarchy or in the rein-
forcement of a republic, but in the creation of a Germanic state.

The question of the outward shaping of this state, its crowning,
so to speak, is not of basic importance, but is determined only
by questions of practical expediency.

For a people that has once understood the great problems and
tasks of its existence, the questions of outward formalities will
no longer lead to inner struggle.

(11) The question of the movement’s inner organization is one
of expediency and not of principle.

The best organization is not that which inserts the greatest,
but that which inserts the smallest, intermediary apparatus be-
tween the leadership of a movement and its individual adherents.
For the function of organization is the tran smis sion of a definite
idea — which always first arises from the brain of an individual
— to a larger body of men and the supervision of its realization.

Hence organization is in all things only a necessary evU. In
the best case it is a means to an end, in the worst case an end in
itself.

Since the world produces more mechanical than ideal natures,
the forms of organization are usually created more easily than
ideas as such.

The practical development of every idea striving for realiza-
tion in this world, particularly of one possessing a reform char-
acter, is in its broad outlines as follows:

Some idea of genius arises in the brain of a man who feels
called upon to transmit his knowledge to the rest of humanity.
He preaches his view and gradually wins a certain circle of ad-

Authority op the Central Oppice

347

herents. This process of the direct and personal transmittance
of a man’s ideas to the rest of his fellow men ^ is the most ideal
and natural. With the rising increase in the adherents of the new
doctrine, it gradually becomes impossible for the exponent of
the idea to go on exerting a personal, direct influence on the
innumerable supporters, to lead and direct them. Proportion-
ately as, in consequence of the growth of the community, the
direct and shortest communication is excluded, the necessity of
a connecting organization arises: thus, the ideal condition is
ended and is replaced by the necessary evil of organization.
Little sub-groups are formed which in the political movement,
for example, call themselves local groups and constitute the
germ-ceUs of the future organization.

If the unity of the doctrine is not to be lost, however, this sub-
division must not take place until the authority of the spiritual
founder and of the school trained by him can be regarded as
unconditional. The geo-political significance of a focal center
in a movement cannot be overemphasized. Only the presence of
such a place, exerting the magic spell of a Mecca or a Rome, can
in the long run give the movement a force which is based on
inner unity and the recognition of a summit representing this
unity.

Thus, in forming the first organizational germ-ceHs we must
never lose sight of the necessity, not only of preserving the im-
portance of the original local source of the idea, but of making it
paramount. This intensification of the ideal, moral, and factual
immensity of the movement’s point of origin and direction
must take place in exact proportion as the movement’s germ-
cells, which have now become innumerable, demand new links in
the shape of organizational forms.

For, as the increasing number of individual adherents makes
it impossible to continue direct communication with them for
the formation of the lowest bodies, the ultimate innumerable
increase ® of these lowest organizational forms compels in turn

1 ‘die andere Mitwelt.'

® ‘die zaJtllose Vermehrung.’

348

Mein Kampf

creation of higher associations which politically can be desig-
nated roughly as county or district groups.

Easy as it still may be to maintain the authority of the original
center toward the lowest local groups, it will be equally difficult to
mm'ntai'n this position toward the higher organizational forms
which now arise. But this is the precondition for the unified
existence of the movement and hence for carrying out an idea.

If, finally, these larger intermediary divisions are also com-
bined into new organizational forms, the difficulty is further in-
creased of safeguarding, even toward them, the unconditional
leading character of the original founding site, its school, etc.

Therefore, the mechanical forms of an organization may only
be developed to the degree in which the spiritual ideal authority
of a center seems unconditionally secured. In political forma-
tions this guaranty can often seem provided only by practical
power.

From this the following directives for the inner structure of
the movement resulted:

(a) Concentration for the time being of all activity in a single
place: Munich. Training of a community of unconditionally re-
liable supporters and development of a school for the subse-
quent dissemination of the idea. Acquisition of the necessary
authority for the future by the greatest possible visible suc-
cesses in this one place.

To make the movement and its leaders known, it was neces-
sary, not only to shake the belief in the invincibility of the
Marxist doctrine in one place for all to see, but to demonstrate
the possibility of an opposing movement.

(b) Formation of local groups only when the authority of the
central leadership in Munich may be regarded as unquestionably
recognized.

(c) Likewise the formation of district, county, or provincial
groups depends, not only on the need for them, but also on cer-
tainty that an unconditional recognition of the center has been
achieved.

Furthermore, the creation of organizational forms is dependent

Inner Structure of the Movement

349

on the men who are available and can be considered as leaders.

This may occur in two ways:

(a) The movement disposes of the necessary financial means
for the training and schooling of minds capable of future leader-
ship. It then distributes the material thus acquired systemati-
cally according to criteria of tactical and other expediency.

This way is the easier and quicker; however, it demands great
financial means, since this leader material is only able to work
for the movement when paid.

(b) The movement, owing to the lack of financial means, is
not in a position to appoint ofi&cial leaders, but for the present
must depend on honorary ofiicers.

This way is the slower and more difficult.

Under certain circumstances the leadership of a movement
must let large territories lie fallow, unless there emerges from the
adherents a man able and willing to put himself at the disposal
of the leadership, and organize and lead the movement in the
district in question.

It may happen that in large territories there will be no one, in
other places, however, two or even three almost equally capable.
The difficulty that lies in such a development is great and can
only be overcome in the course of years.

The prerequisite for the creation of an organizational form is
and remains the man necessary for its leadership.

As worthless as an army in all its organizational forms is with-
out officers, equally worthless is a political organization without
the suitable leader.

Not founding a local group is more useful to the movement
when a suitable leader personality is lacking than to have its
organization miscarry due to the absence of a leader to direct
and drive it forward.

Leadership itself requires not only will but also ability, and
a greater importance must be attached to will and energy than to
intelligence as such, and most valuable of all is a combination of
ability, determination, and perseverance.

(12) The future of a movement is conditioned by the fanati-

350

Mein Kampf

rigm^ yes, the intolerance, with which its adherents uphold it as
the sole correct movement, and push it past other formations
of a similar sort.

It is the greatest error to believe that the strength of a move-
ment increases through a union with another of similar character.
It is true that every enlargement of this kind at first means an
increase in outward dimensions, -which to the eyes of superficial
observers means power; in truth, however, it only takes over the
germs of an inner weakening that will later become eSective.

For whatever can be said about the like character of two
movements, in reality it is never present. For otherwise there
would actually be not two movements but one. And regardless
wherein the differences lie — even if they consisted only in the
varying abilities of the leadership — they exist. But the natural
law of all development demands, not the coupling of two forma-
tions which are simply not alike, but the victory of the stronger
and the cultivation of the victor’s force and strength made
possible alone by the resultant struggle.

Through the imion of two more or less equal political party
formations momentary advantages may arise, but in the long
run any success won in this way is the cause of inner weaknesses
which appear later.

The greatness of a movement is exclusively guaranteed by
. the unrestricted development of its inner strength and its steady
growth up to the final -victory over all competitors.

Yes, we can say that its strength and hence the justification of
its existence increases only so long as it recognizes the principle
of struggle as the premise of its development, and that it has
passed the high point of its strength in the moment when com-
plete -victory inclines to its side.

Therefore, it is only profitable for a movement to strive for
this victory in a form which does not lead to an early momentary
success, but which in a long struggle occasioned by absolute in-
tolerance also provides long growth.

Movements which increase only by the so-called fusion of
similar formations, thus owing their strength to compromises, are

Education for Struggle

351

like hothouse plants. They shoot up, but they lack the strength
to defy the centuries and withstand heavy storms.

The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea
in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with
which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly im-
poses its will against all others. If an idea in itself is sound and,
thus armed, takes up a struggle on this earth, it is unconquerable
and every persecution will only add to its inner strength.

The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotia-
tions for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in
the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching
and fighting for its own doctrine.

The apparent head start which movements acWeve by fusions
is amply caught up with by the steady increase in the strength of
a doctrine and organization that remain independent and fight
their own fight.

(13) On principle the movement must so educate its members
that they do not view the struggle as something idly cooked up,
but as the thing that they themselves are striving for.* Therefore,
they must not fear the hostility of their enemies, but must feel
that it is the presupposition for their own right to exist. They
must not shun the hatred of the enemies of our nationality and
our philosophy and its manifestations; they must long for them.
And among the manifestations of this hate are lies and slander.

Any man who is not attacked in the Jewish newspapers, not
slandered and vilified, is no decent German and no true Nationals
Socialist. The best yardstick for the value of his attitude, for
the sincerity of his conviction, and the force of his will is the
hostility he receives from the mortal enemy of our people.

It must, over and over again, be pointed out to the adherents
of the movement and in a broader sense to the whole people that
the Jew and his newspapers always lie and that even an occasional
truth is only intended to cover a bigger falsification and is there-
fore itself in turn a deliberate untruth. The Jew is the great

1 '■das selbst Erslrebte.’ Second edition has: 'das selbst Erlebte': ‘something
they themselves experience.’

352

Mein Kamff

master in lying, and lies and deception are his weapons in struggle.

Every Jewish slander and every Jewish lie is a scar of honor
on the body of our warriors.

The man they have most reviled stands closest to us and the
man they hate worst is our best friend.

Anyone who picks up a Jewish newspaper in the morning and
does not see himself slandered in it has not made profitable use
of the previous day; for if he had, he would be persecuted, reviled,
slandered, abused, befouled. And only the man who combats this
mortal enemy of our nation and of all Aryan humanity and cul-
ture most effectively may expect to see the slanders of this race
and the struggle of this people directed against him.

When these principles enter the flesh and blood of our sup-
porters, the movement will become unshakable and invincible.

(14) The movement must promote respect for personality by
aU means; it must never forget that in personal worth lies the
worth of everything human; that every idea and every achieve-
ment is the result of one man’s creative force and that the admi-
ration of greatness constitutes, not only a tribute of thanks to
the latter, but casts a unifying bond around the grateful.

Personality cannot be replaced; especially when it embodies
not the mechanical but the cultural and creative element. No
more than a famous master can be replaced and another take
over the completion of the half-finished painting he has left
behind can the great poet and thinker, the great statesman and
the great soldier, be replaced. For their activity lies always in
the province of art. It is not mechanically trained, but inborn
by God’s grace.

The greatest revolutionary changes and achievements of this
earth, its greatest cultural accomplishments, the immortal deeds
in the field of statesmanship, etc., are forever inseparably bound
up with a name and are represented by it. To renounce doing
homage to a great spirit means the loss of an immense strength
which emanates from the names of aU great men and women.

The Jew knows this best of all. He, whose great men are only
great in the destruction of humanity and its culture, makes sure

Fear op Obscurity

353

that they are idolatrously admired. He attempts only to repre-
sent the admiration of the nations for their own spirits as un-
worthy and brands it as a ‘personality cult.'

As soon as a people becomes so cowardly that it succumbs to
this Jewish arrogance and effrontery, it renounces the mightiest
power that it possesses; for this is based, not on respect for the
masses, but on the veneration of genius and on uplift and en-
lightenment by his example.

When human hearts break and human souls despair, then from
the twilight of the past the great conquerors of distress and care,
of disgrace and misery, of spiritual slavery and physical com-
pulsion, look down on them and hold out their eternal hands to
the despairing mortals!

Woe to the people that is ashamed to take themi

* * *

In the first period of our movement’s development we suf-
ered from nothing so much as from the insignificance, the un-
knownness of our names, which in themselves made our success
questionable. The hardest thing in this first period, when often
only six, seven, or eight heads met together, to use the words of
an opponent, was to arouse and preserve in this tiny circle faith
in the mighty future of the movement.

Consider that six or seven men, all nameless poor devils, had
joined together with the intention of forming a movement, hop-
ing to succeed — where the powerful great mass parties had
hitherto failed — in restoring a German Reich of greater power
and glory. If people had attacked us in those days, yes, even if
they had laughed at us, in both cases we should have been happy.
For the oppressive thing was neither the one nor the other; it
was the complete lack of attention we found in those days.*

When I entered the circle of these few men, there could be no
question of a party or a movement. I have already described my

' Second edition adds: ‘from which I sufiered most.’

354

Mein Kampf

impressions regarding my first meeting with this little formation.
In the weeks that followed, I had time and occasion to study this
so-called ‘party’ which at first looked so impossible. And, by
God, the picture was depressing and discouraging. There was
nothing here, really positively nothing. The name of a party
whose committee constituted practically the whole membership,
which, whether we liked it or not, was exactly what it was trying
to combat, a parliament on a small scale. Here, too, the vote
ruled; if big parliaments yelled their throats hoarse for months
at a time, it was about important problems at least, but in this
little circle the answer to a safely arrived letter let loose an
interminable argument!

The public, of course, knew nothing at all about this. Not a
soul in Munich knew the party even by name, except for its few
supporters and their few friends.

Every Wednesday a so-called committee meeting took place
in a Munich caf6, and once a week an evening lecture. Since the
whole membership of the ‘movement’ was at first represented in
the committee, the faces of course were always the same. Now
the task was at last to burst the bonds of the small circle, to W'in
new supporters, but above all to make the name of the movement
known at any price.

In this we used the following technique:

Every month, and later every two weeks, we tried to hold a
‘meeting.’ The invitations to it were written on the typewriter or
sometimes by hand on slips of paper and the first few times were
distributed, or handed out,* by us personally. Each one of us
turned to the circle of his friends, and tried to induce someone
or other to attend one of these affairs.

The result was miserable.

I still remember how I myself in this first period once distrib-
uted about eighty of these slips of paper, and how in the evening
we sat waiting for the masses who were expected to appear.

An hour late, the ‘chairman’ finally had to open the ‘meeting.’
We were again seven men, the old seven.

* ‘verteilt bm. ausgetragen,’

The First Meeting

355

We changed over to having the invitation slips written on a
machine and mimeographed in a Munich stationery store. The
result at the next meeting was a few more listeners. Thus the
niunber rose slowly from eleven to thirteen, finally to seventeen,
to twenty-three, to thirty-four listeners.

By little collections among us poor devils the funds were
raised with which at last to advertise the meeting by notices in
the then independent Miinchener Beobachter in Munich. And
this time the success was positively amazing. We had organized
the meeting in the Munich HofbrauhauskeUer (not to be confused
with the Munich Hofbrauhaus-Festsaal), a little room with a
capacity of barely one hundred and thirty people. To me per-
sonally the room seemed like a big hall and each of us was worried
whether we would succeed in filling this ‘mighty’ edifice with
people.

At seven o’clock one hundred and eleven people were present
and the meeting was opened.

A Munich professor made the main speech, and I, for the first
time, in public, was to speak second.

In the eyes of Herr Harrer, then first chairman of the party,
the affair seemed a great adventure. This gentleman, who was
certainly otherwise honest, just happened to be convinced that
I might be capable of doing certain things, but not of speaking.
And even in the time that followed he could not be dissuaded
from this opinion.

Things turned out differently. In this first meeting that could
be called public I had been granted twenty minutes’ speaking
time.

I spoke for thirty minutes, and what before I had simply felt
within me, without in any way knowing it, was now proved by
reality: I could speak! After thirty minutes the people in the
small room were electrified and the enthusiasm was first expressed
by the fact that my appeal to the self-sacrifice of those present
led to the donation of three hundred marks. This relieved us of
a great worry. For at this time the financial stringency was so
great that we were not even in a position to have slogans printed^

356

Mein Kampf

for the movement, or even distribute leaflets. Now the founda-
tion was laid for a little fimd from which at least our barest needs
and most urgent necessities could be defrayed. But in another
respect as well, the success of this first larger meeting was con-
siderable.

At that time I had begun to bring a number of fresh young
forces into the committee. During my many years in the army I
had come to know a great number of faithful comrades who now
slowly, on the basis of my persuasion, began to enter the move-
ment. They were all energetic young people, accustomed to
discipline, and from their period of service raised in the principle:
no thin g at all is impossible, everything can be done if you only
want it.

How necessary such a transfusion of new blood was, I myself
could recognize after only a few weeks of collaboration.

Herr Harrer, then first chairman of the party, was really a
journalist and as such he was certainly widely educated. But
for a party leader he had one exceedingly serious drawback: he
was no speaker for the masses. As scrupulously conscientious and
precise as his work in itself was, it nevertheless lacked — perhaps
because of this very lack of a great oratorical gift — the great
sweep. Herr Drexler, then chairman of the Munich local group,
was a simple worker, likewise not very significant as a speaker,
and moreover he was no soldier. He had not served in the army,
even during the War he had not been a soldier, so that feeble and
uncertain as he was in his whole nature, he lacked the only
schooling which was capable of turning uncertain and soft natures
into men. Thus both men were not made of stuff which would
have enabled them not only to bear in their hearts fanatical faith
in the victory of a movement, but also with indomitable energy
and will, and if necessary with brutal ruthlessness, to sweep aside
any obstacles which might stand in the path of the rising new
idea. For this only beings were fitted in whom spirit and body
had acquired those military virtues which can perhaps best be
described as follows: swift as greyhounds, tough as leather, and
hard as Krupp steel.

Soldiers as the Care or the Movement

357

At that time I myself was still a soldier. My exterior and
interior had been whetted and hardened for well-nigh six years,
so that at first I must have seemed strange in this circle. I, too,
had forgotten how to say: ‘that’s impossible,’ or ‘it won’t work’;
‘we can’t risk that,’ ‘that is too dangerous,’ etc.

For of course the business was dangerous. Little attention as
the Reds paid to one of your bourgeois gossip clubs whose inner
innocence and hence harmlessness for themselves they knew better
than its own members, they were determined to use every means
to get rid of a movement which did seem dangerous to them.
Their most effective method in such cases has at all times been
terror or violence.

In the year 1920, in many regions of Germany, a national
meeting that dared to address its appeal to the broad masses and
publicly invite attendance was simply impossible. The partici-
pants in such a meeting were dispersed and driven away with
bleeding heads. Such an accomplishment, to be sure, did not
require much skill: for after all the biggest so-called bourgeois
mass meeting would scatter at the sight of a dozen Communists
like hares running from a hound.

Most loathsome to the Marxist deceivers of the people was
inevitably a movement whose explicit aim was the winning of
those masses which had hitherto stood exclusively in the service
of the international Marxist Jewish stock exchange parties. The
very name of ‘ German Workers’ Party’ had the effect of goading
them. Thus one could easily imagine that on the first suitable
occasion the conflict would begin with the Marxist inciters who
were then stiU drunk with victory.

In the small circle that the movement then was a certain fear
of such a fight prevailed. The members wanted to appear in
public as little as possible, for fear of being beaten up. In their
mind’s eye they already saw the first great meeting smashed and
the movement finished for good. I had a hard time putting for-
ward my opinion that we must not dodge this struggle, but pre-
pare for it, and for this reason acquire the armament which alone
offers protection against violence. Terror is not broken by the

358

Mein Kampf

mind, but by terror. The success of the first meeting strengthened
my position in this respect. We gained courage for a second
meeting on a somewhat larger scale.

About October, 1919, the second, larger meeting took place
in the Eberlbraukeller. Topic; Brest-Litovsk and Versailles.
Four gentlemen appeared as speakers. I myself spoke for almost
an hour and the success was greater than at the first rally. The
audience had risen to more than one hundred and thirty. An
attempted disturbance was at once nipped in the bud by my com-
rades. The disturbers flew down the stairs with gashed heads.

Two weeks later another meeting took place in the same hall.
The attendance had risen to over one hundred and seventy and
the room was well filled. I had spoken again, and again the
success was greater than at the previous meeting.

I pressed for a larger hall. At length we found one at the other
end of town in the ‘Deutsches Reich’ on Dachauer Strasse.
The first meeting in the new hall was not so well attended as the
previous one: barely one hundred and forty persons. In the com-
mittee, hopes began to sink and the eternal doubters felt that
the excessive repetition of our ‘demonstrations’ had to be con-
sidered the cause of the bad attendance. There were violent
arguments in which I upheld the view that a city of seven hun-
dred thousand inhabitants could stand not one meeting every
i two weeks, but ten every week, that we must not let ourselves
be misled by failures, that the road we had taken was the right
one, and that sooner or later, with steady perseverance, success
was bound to come. AH in all, this whole period of winter
1919-20 was a single struggle to strengthen confidence in the
victorious might of the young movement and raise it to that
fanaticism of faith which am move mountains.

The next meeting in the same hall showed me to be right. The
attendance had risen to over two hundred; the public as well as
financial success was brilliant.

I urged immediate preparations for another meeting. It took
place barely two weeks later and the audience rose to over two
hundred and seventy heads.

Giving the Movement Its Inner Form

359

Two weeks later, for the seventh time, we called together the
supporters and friends of the new movement and the same haU
could barely hold the people who had grown to over four
hundred.

It was at this time that the young movement received its inner
form. In the small circle there were sometimes more or less vio-
lent disputes. Various quarters — then as today — carped at
designating the young movement as a party. In such a concep-
tion I have always seen proof of the critics’ practical incompe-
tence and intellectual smallness. They were and always are the
men who cannot distinguish externals from essentials, and who
try to estimate the value of a movement according to the most
bombastic-sounding titles, most of which, sad to say, the vocabu-
lary of our forefathers must provide. -■ . ■

It was hard, at that time, to make it clear to people that every
movement, as long as it has not achieved the victory of its ideas,
hence its goal, is a party even if it assumes a thousand different
names.

If any man wants to put into practical effect a bold idea whose
realization seems useful in the interests of his fellow men, he
will first of all have to seek supporters who are ready to fight for
his intentions. And if this intention consists only in destro)dng
the existing parties, of ending the fragmentation, the exponents
of this view and propagators of this determination are themselves
a party, as long as this goal has not been achieved. It is hair-
splitting and shadow-boxing when some antiquated folkish the-
oretician, whose practical successes stand in inverse proportion
to his wisdom, imagines that he can change the party character
which every young movement possesses by changing this term.

On the contrary.

If anything is unfolkish, it is this tossing around of old Ger-
manic expressions which neither fit into the present period nor
represent an)rthing definite, but can easily lead to- seeing the sig-
nificance of a movement in its outward vocabulary. This is a
real menace which today can be observed on countless occasions.

Altogether then, and also in the period that followed, I had to

360

Mein Kampf

warn again and again against those deutschvolkisch^ wandering
scholars whose positive accomplishment is always practically nil,
but whose conceit can scarcely be excelled. The young movement
had and still has to guard itself against an influx of people whose
sole recommendation for the most part lies in their declaration
that they have fought for thirty and even forty years for the
same idea. Anyone who fights for forty years for a so-called idea
without being able to bring about even the slightest success,
in fact, without having prevented the victory of the opposite,
has, with forty years of activity, provided proof of his own in-
capacity. The danger above all lies in the fact that such natures
do not want to fit into the movement as links, but keep shooting
ofi their mouths about leading circles in which alone, on the
strength of their age-old activity, they can see a suitable place
for further activity. But woe betide if a young movement is
surrended to the mercies of such people. No more than a busi-
ness man who in forty years of activity has steadily run a big
business into the ground is fitted to be the founder of a new one,
is a folkish Methuselah, who in exactly the same time has gummed
up and petrified a great idea, fit for the leadership of a new,
young movement!

Besides, only a fragment of all these people come into the new
movement to serve it, but in most cases, under its protection or

* The Deutsckvolkische Partei was founded in 1914 by a union of various
anti-Semitic groups. After the revolution of November, 1918, it dissolved
into the Deutscknationale Volkspartei (German National People’s Party)
which was the strongest party of the extreme Right under the Weimar
Republic, until overshadowed by the National Socialists. At the same time
a Dettlschvolkischer Bund was founded, which in 1922 assumed the name
of Deulschvolkischer Schuls- und Trutzbund and was suppressed after the
murder of Rathenau. A Deutschvolkische Freiheitspartei was also founded
in 1922, but soon merged with the Nazis. Finally, there was a DeutsckmU
kische Preiheitsbewegung under the leadership of Ludendorff, which broke
away from the Nazis in 1925.

Hitler’s attacks here are directed against all his Rightist competitors,
those belonging to rival movements and those struggling for leadership
within his own movement.

Tin Swords and Dressed Bearskins

361

through the possibilities it offers, to warm over their old cabbage.

They do not want to benefit the idea of the new doctrine, they
only expect it to give them a chance to make humanity miserable
with their own ideas. For what kind of ideas they often are, it
is hard to tell.

The characteristic thing about these people is that they rave
about old Germanic heroism, about dim prehistory, stone axes,
spear and shield, but in reality are the greatest cowards that
can be imagined. For the same people who brandish scholarly
imitations of old German tin swords, and wear a dressed bear-
skin with bull’s horns over their bearded heads, preach for the
present nothing but struggle with spiritual weapons, and run
away as fast as they can from every Communist blackjack.
Posterity will have little occasion to glorify their own heroic
existence in a new epic.

I came to know these people too well not to feel the profound-
est disgust at their miserable play-acting. But they make a ridicu-
lous impression on the broad masses, and the Jew has every
reason to spare these foUdsh comedians, even to prefer them to
the true fighters for a coming German state. With all this, these
people are boundlessly conceited; despite all the proofs of their
complete incompetence, they claim to know everything better
and become a real plague for all straightforward and honest
fighters to whom heroism seems worth honoring, not only in the
past, but who also endeavor to give posterity a similar picture
by their own actions.

And often it can be distinguished only with difficulty which of
these people act out of inner stupidity or incompetence and
which only pretend to for certain reasons. Especially with the
so-called religious reformers on an old Germanic basis, I alwa)^
have the feeling that they were sent by those powers which do
not want the resurrection of our people. For their whole activity
leads the people away from the common struggle against the
common enemy, the Jew, and instead lets them waste their
strength on inner religious squabbles as senseless as they are
disastrous. For these very reasons the establishment of a strong

362

Mein Kampe

central power implying the unconditional authority of a leader-
ship is necessary in the movement. By it alone can such ruinous
elements be squelched. And for this reason the greatest enemies
of a uniform, strictly led and conducted movement are to be
found in the circles of these folkish wandering Jews. In the move-
ment they hate the power that checks their mischief.

Not for no thing did the young movement establish a definite
progr am in which it did not use the word ‘folkish.' The concept
folkish, in view of its conceptual boundlessness, is no possible
basis for a movement and offers no standard for membership in
one. The more indefinable this concept is in practice, the more
and broader interpretations it permits, the greater becomes the
possibility of invoking its authority. The insertion of such an
indefinable and variously interpretable concept into the politi-
cal struggle leads to the destruction of any strict fighting soli-
darity, since the latter does not permit lea\fing to the individual
the definition of his faith and will.

And it is disgraceful to see all the people who run around today
with the word ‘folkish’ on their caps and how many have their
own interpretation of this concept. A Bavarian professor by the
name of Bayer,^ a famous fighter with spiritual weapons, rich
in equally spiritual marches on Berlin, thinks that the concept
folkish consists only in a monarchistic attitude. This learned
mind, however, has thus far forgotten to give a closer explana-
tion of the identity of our German monarchs of the past with the
folkish opinion of today. And I fear that in this the gentleman
would not easily succeed. For anything less folkish than most of
the Germanic monarchic state formations can hardly be imag-
ined. If this were not so, they would never have disappeared, or
their disappearance would offer proof of the unsoimdness of the
folkish outlook.

And so everyone shoots off his mouth about this concept as he
happens to understand it. As a basis for a movement of political

^ Second edition has: ‘a well-known professor in Bavaria.’ The reason for
the change seems to have been nothing more than the professor’s unimpor-
tance.

‘ Spiritual Weapons ’ — ‘ Silent Workers ’ 363

struggle, such a multiplicity of opinions is out of the question.

I shall not even speak of the unworldliness of these folkish
Saint Johns of the twentieth century or their ignorance of the
popular soul. It is sufficiently illustrated by the ridicule with
which they are treated by the Left, which lets them talk and
laughs at them.

Anyone in this world who does not succeed in being hated by
his adversaries does not seem to me to be worth much as a
friend. And thus the friendship of these people for our young
movement was not only worthless, but solely and always harm-
ful, and it was also the main reason why, first of aU, we chose
the name of ‘party’ — we had grounds for hoping that by this
alone a whole swarm of these folkish sleepwalkers would be
frightened away from us — and why in the second place we
termed ourselves National Socialist German Workers' Party.

The first expression kept away the antiquity enthusiasts, the
big-mouths and superficial proverb-makers of the so-called
‘folkish idea,’ and the second freed us from the entire host of
knights of the ‘spiritual sword,’ all the poor wretches who wield
the ‘spiritual weapon’ as a protecting shield to hide their actual
cowardice.

It goes without saying that in the following period we were
attacked hardest especially by these last, not actively, of course,
but only with the pen, just as you would expect from such folkish
goose-quills. For them our principle, ‘Against those who attack
us with force we will defend ourselves with force,’ had something
terrif3dng about it. They persistently reproached us, not only
with brutal worship of the blackjack, but with lack of spirit as
such. The fact that in a public meeting a Demosthenes can be
brought to silence if only fifty idiots, supported by their voices
and their fists, refuse to let him speak, makes no impression
whatever on such a quack. His inborn cowardice never lets him
get into such danger. For he does not work ‘noisily’ and ‘ob-
trusively,’ but in ‘silence.’

Even today I cannot warn our young movement enough against
fallin g into the net of these so-called ‘silent workers.’ They are

364

Mein Kampf

not only cowaxds, but they are also always incompetents and
do-nothings. A man who knows a thing, who is aware of a given
danger, and sees the possibility of a remedy with his own eyes, has
the duty and obligation, by God, not to work ‘silently,’ but to
stand up before the whole public against the evil and for its cure.
If he does not do so, he is a disloyal, miserable weakling who
fails either from cowardice or from laziness and inability. To
be sure, this does not apply at all to most of these people, for
they know absolutely nothing, but behave as though they knew
God knows what; they can do nothing but try to swindle the
whole world with their tricks; they are lazy, but with the ‘silent’
work they claim to do, they arouse the impression of an enormous
and conscientious activity; in short, they are swindlers, political
crooks who hate the honest work of others. As soon as one of
these folkish moths praises the darkness ‘ of silence, we can bet a
thousand to one that by it he produces nothing, but steals, steals
from the fruits of other people’s work.

To top all this, there is the arrogance and conceited effrontery
mth which this lazy, light-shunning rabble fall upon the work of
others, trying to criticize it from above, thus in reality aiding the
mortal enemies of our nationality.

Every last agitator who possesses the courage to stand on a
tavern table among his adversaries, to defend his opinions with
manly forthrightness, does more than a thousand of these lying,
treacherous sneaks. He will surely be able to convert one man
or another and win him for the movement. It will be possible to
examine his achievement and establish the effect of his activity
by its results. Only the cowardly swindlers who praise their
‘silent’ work and thus wrap themselves in the protective cloak
of a despicable anonymity, are good for nothing and may in the
truest sense of the word be considered drones in the resurrection
of our people.

* * #

1 ‘sich immer awf das Dunkd der Stitte berufi.' Second edition has: ‘den
Wert’ for ‘das Dunkel’ The meaning would then be: ‘cites the value of
silence.'

The First Big Mass Meeting

36S

At the beginning of 1920, 1 urged the holding of the first great
mass meeting. Differences of opinion arose. A few leading party
members regarded the affair as premature and hence disastrous
in effect. The Red press had begun to concern itself with us and
we were fortunate enough gradually to achieve its hatred. We
had begun to speak in the discussions at other meetings. Of
course, each of us was at once shouted down. There was, how-
ever, some success. People got to know us and proportionately
as their knowledge of us deepened, the aversion and rage against
us grew. And thus we were entitled to hope that in our first great
mass meeting we would be visited by a good many of our friends
from the Red camp.

I, too, realized that there was great probability of the meeting
being broken up. But the struggle had to be carried through, if
not now, a few months later. It was entirely in our power to
make the movement eternal on the very first day by blindly and
ruthlessly fighting for it. I knew above aU the mentality of the
adherents of the Red side far too well, not to know that resistance
to the utmost not only makes the biggest impression, but also
wins supporters. And so we just had to be resolved to put up
this resistance.

Herr Harrer,^ then first chairman of the party, felt he could
not support my views with regard to the time chosen and conse-
quently, being an honest, upright man, he withdrew from the
leadership of the party. His place was taken by Herr Anton
Drexler. I had reserved for myself the organization of propa-
ganda and began ruthlessly to carry it out.

And so, the date of February 4, 1920, was set for the holding of
this first great mass meeting of the still unknown movement.

I personally conducted the preparations. They were very brief.

‘ Harrer was for the masses whom he claimed Hitler was alienating. He
believed in telling the truth and opposed Hitler’s unbridled propaganda.
He also opposed anti-Semitism and the wealthy backers whom Hitler was
trying to bring into the movement. After the acceptance of the 25 Points
which he considered demagogic and which included the anti-Semitic Point 4,
he resigned.

366

Mein Kampf

Altogether the whole apparatus was adjusted to make lightnmg
decisions. Its aim was to enable us to take a position on current
questions in the form of mass meetings within twenty-four hours.
They were to be announced by posters and leaflets whose content
was determined according to those guiding principles which in
rough outlines I have set down in my treatise on propaganda.
Effect on the broad masses, concentration on a few points, con-
stant repetition of the same, self-assured and self-reliant frammg
of the text in the forms of an apodictic statement, greatest perse-
verance in distribution and patience in awaiting the effect.

On principle, the color red was chosen; it is the most exciting;
•we knew it would infuriate and provoke our adversaries the most
and thus bring us to their attention and memory whether they
liked it or not.

In the following period the inner fraternization in Ba'varia
between the Marxists and the Center as a political party was
most clearly shown in the concern with which the ruling Bavarian
People’s Party tried to weaken the effect of our posters on the
Red working masses and later to prohibit them. If the police
found no other way to proceed against them, ‘considerations of
traffic’ had to do the trick, till finally, to please the inner, silent
Red ally, these posters, which had given back himdreds of
thousands of workers, incited and seduced by internationalism,
to their German nationality, were forbidden entirely with the
helping hand of a so-called German National People’s Party
As an appendix and example to our young movement, I am adding
a number of these proclamations. They come from a period
embracing nearly three years; they can best illustrate the mighty
struggle which the young movement fought at this time. They
will also bear witness to posterity of the ■wiU and honesty of our
convictions and the despotism of the so-called national authori-
ties in prohibiting, just because they personally found it uncom-
fortable, a nationalization which would have won back broad
masses of our nationality.

They will also help to destroy the opinion that there had been

* See page 360.

POHNER AND FrICK

367

a national government as such in Bavaria and also document for
posterity the fact that the national Bavaria of 1919, 1920, 1921,
1922, 1923 was not forsooth the result of a national government,
but that the government was merely forced to take consideration
of a people that was gradually feeling national.^

The governments themselves did everything to eliminate this
process of recovery and to make it impossible.

Here only two men must be excluded:

Ernst Pd'hner, the police president at that time, and Chief
Deputy Frick, ^ his faithful advisor, were the only higher state
officials who even then had the courage to be first Germans and
then officials. Ernst Pbhner was the only man in a responsible
post who did not curry favor with the masses, but felt responsible
to his nationality and was ready to risk and sacrifice everything,
even if necessary his personal existence, for the resurrection of
the German people whom he loved above aU things. And for this
reason he was always a troublesome thorn in the eyes of those

*‘a«/ ein allmMich mtioml fiihlendes Volk.’

® Ernst Pohner, former Bavarian police president, became a justice of the
Bavarian Supreme Court in 1921. It was he who induced the Munich police
not to interfere with Hitler’s Putsch of November 8, 1923. At the trial, he
declared: ‘For five years I did nothing but high treason.’ He was convicted
and sentenced to some months of imprisonment, but was prevented from
serving his term by his election as a Volkisch deputy in the Bavarian Diet.
After the trial he became disillusioned with the Nazis, mainly because of
personalities, but did not openly break with them. He joined the German
Nationalists. Some months later he was killed in an automobile accident.

Wilhelm Frick was one of the few Nazi leaders who did not fight in the
War. Though in good health, he remained an official in the Palatinate.
After the Republic of Councils he became chief of the political police in
Munich. He spent some months in prison for his part in neutralizing the
police during the Putsch, but was released when elected to the Reichstag.
He was the first National Socialist {^pointed to a provincial cabinet — as
minister of the interior in Thuringia. In 1930 he tried to obtain German
citizenship for Hitler by making him a gendarme in the small Thuringian
town of Hildburghausen. Hitler himself dropped the scheme as a result of
public ridicule. When Hitler became Chancellor, in January, 1933, Frick be-
came Reich Minister of the Interior. He helped the National Socialist revo-
lution of March, 1933, by ordering the authorities not to resist.

368

Mein Kampf

venal offidds the law of whose actions was prescribed, not by
the interest of their people and the necessary uprising for its
freedom, but by the boss’s orders, without regard for the welfare
of the national trust confided in them.

And above all he was one of those natures who, contrasting
with most of the guardians of our so-called state authority, do
not fear the enmity of traitors to the people and the nation, but
long for it as for a treasure which a decent man must take for
granted. The hatred of Tews and Marxists, their whole campaign
of lies and slander, were for him the sole happiness amid the
misery of our people.

A man of granite honesty, of antique simplicity and German
straightforwardness, for whom the words ‘Sooner dead than a
slave’ were no phrase but the essence of his whole being.

He and his collaborator. Dr. Frick, are in my eyes the only
men in a state position who possess the right to be called co-
creators of a national Bavaria.

Before we proceeded to hold our first mass meetmg, not only
did the necessary propaganda material have to be made ready,
but the main points of the program also had to be put into print.

In the second volvune I shall thoroughly develop the guiding
principles which we had in mind, particularly in framing the
program. Here I shall only state that it was done, not only to
give the young movement form and content, but to make its
aims understandable to the broad masses.

Circles of the so-called intelligentsia have mocked and ridiculed
this and attempted to criticize it. But the soundness of our point
of view at that time has been shown by the effectiveness of this
program.

In these years I have seen dozens of new movements arise and
they have all vanished and evaporated without trace, A single
one remains: The National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
And today more than ever I harbor the conviction that people can
combat it, that they can attempt to paralyze it, that petty party
ministers can forbid us to speak and write, but that they will
never prevent the victory of our ideas.

Program Expounded For the First Time

369

When not even memory will reveal the names of the entire
present-day state conception and its advocates, the fundamentals
of the National Socialist program will be the foundations of a
coming state.

Our four months’ activities at meetings up to January, 1920,
had slowly enabled us to save up the small means that we needed
for printing our first leaflet, our first poster, and our program.

If I take the movement’s first large mass meeting as the con-
clusion of this volume, it is because by it the party burst the
narrow bonds of a small club and for the first time exerted a
determining influence on the mightiest factor of our time,
public opinion.

I myself at that time had but one concern: Will the hall be
filled, or win we speak to a yawning hall? ^ I had the unshakable
irmer conviction that if the people came, the day was sure to be
a great success for the young movement. And so I anxiously
looked forward to that evening.

The meeting was to be opened at 7 :30. At 7:15 I entered the
Festsaal of the Hofbrauhaus on the Platzl in Munich, and my
heart nearly burst for joy. The gigantic hall — for at that time
it still seemed to me gigantic — was overcrowded with people,
shoulder to shoulder, a mass numbering almost two thousand
people. And above all — those people to whom we wanted to
appeal had come. Far more than half the hall seemed to be
occupied by Communists and Independents.* They had resolved
that our first demonstration would come to a speedy end.

But it turned out differently. After the first speaker had
finished, I took the floor. A few minutes later there was a hail of
shouts, there were violent clashes in the haU, a handful of the
most faithful war comrades and other supporters battled with the
disturbers, and only little by little were able to restore order.

^ ‘githnende Halle’ Second edition for obvious reasons changes this to
‘gdhnende Leere,’ a gaping void.

* In April, 1917, a group of Socialists opposing the war left the party and
founded the Independent Social Democratic Party under the leadership of
Haase and Kautsky.

370

Mein Kampf

I was able to go on speaking. After half an hour the applause
slowly began to drown out the screaming and shouting.

I now took up the program and began to explain it for the
first time.

From minute to minute the interruptions were increasingly
drowned out by shouts of applause. And when I finally submitted
the twenty-five theses, point for point, to the masses and asked
them personally to pronounce judgment on them, one after an-
other was accepted with steadily mounting joy, unanimously
and again unanimously, and when the last thesis had found
its way to the heart of the masses, there stood before me a hall
full of people united by a new conviction, a new faith, a new will.

When after nearly four hours the hall began to empty and the
crowd, shoulder to shoulder, began to move, shove, press toward
the exit like a slow stream, I knew that now the principles of a
movement which could no longer be forgotten were moving out
among the German people.

A fire was kindled from whose flame one day the sword must
come which would regain freedom for the Gennanic Siegfried
and life for the German nation.

And side by side with the coming resurrection, I sensed that
the goddess of inexorable vengeance for the perjured deed of
November 9, 1919, was striding forth.

Thus slowly the haU emptied.

The movement took its course.

MEIN KAMPF

VOLUME

TWO

THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST MOVEMENT

CHAPTER

1

Philosophy and Party

On February 24, 1920, the first great pub-
lic demonstration of our young movement took place. In the
Festsaal of the Munich Hofbrauhaus the twenty-five theses of
the new party’s program were submitted to a crowd of almost two
thousand and every single point was accepted amid jubilant ap-
proval.

With this the first guiding principles and directives were issued
for a struggle which was to do away with a veritable mass of old
traditional conceptions and opinions and with unclear, yes, harm-
ful, aims. Into the rotten and cowardly bourgeois world and into
the triumphant march of the Marxist wave of conquest a new
power phenomenon was entering, which at the eleventh hour
would halt the chariot of doom.

It was self-evident that the new movement could hope to
achieve the necessary importance and the required strength for
this gigantic struggle only if it succeeded from the very first day
in arousing in the hearts of its supporters the holy conviction that
with it political life was to be given, not to a new election slogan,
but to a new philosophy of fundamental significance.

We must bear in mind from what wretched viewpoints so-called
‘party programs’ are normally patched together and from time to
time refurbished or remodeled. We must submit the driving mo-
tives particularly of these bourgeois 'program-commissions’ to
our magnif 3 dng glass, in order to achieve the necessary under-

374

Meik K-Ampp

standing for the evaluation of these progranunatical monstrosities.

It is always one sole concern which impels men to set up new
programs or to change existing ones: concern for the next election.
As soon as it dawns on these parliamentary ‘jugglers’ that the be-
loved people are again revolting and would like to slip out of the
harness of the old party cart, they begin to repaint the shafts.
Then come the stargazers and party astrologers, the so-called
‘e-xperienced,’ ‘shrewd’ men, old parliamentarians as a rule, who
in their ‘rich period of apprenticeship’ can recall analogous cases
when the patience of the masses had burst, and who now sense
that something similar is again menacingly dose. And so they
take up the old prescriptions, form a ‘ commission,’ go about lis-
tening to the voice of the beloved people, sniff at the products of
the press, and thus slowly scent what the dear broad masses
would like to have, what they detest and what they hope for.
Every professional group, even every dass of employees, is stud-
ied with the greatest precision and their most secret' wishes in-
votigated. Even the ‘bad slogans’ of the dangerous opposition
then suddenly become ripe for examination, and, not seldom to
the greatest amazement of their original inventors and dissemina-
tors, turn up, quite innocently and naturally, in the old parties’
treasury' of knowledge.

And so the commissions come together and ‘revise’ the old
program and frame a new one (and in so doing the gentlemen
change their convictions as a soldier in the field changes his shirt,
which is when the old one is full of lice!), in which everybody gets
his share. The peasant gets protection for his agriculture, the in-
dustrialist protection for his product, the consumer protection for
his purchase, the teachers’ salaries are rmsed, the civil servants’
pensions are improved, widows and orphans are to be taken care
of most liberally by the state, trade is promoted, tariffs are to
be reduced, and taxes are pretty much, if not altogether, done
away with. Occasionally it transpires that some group has been
forgotten after all, or that some demand circulating among the
people has not been heard of. Then anything there is room for is
patched in with the greatest haste, until the framers fan hope with

The Life of a People’s Deputy

375

a dear consdence that the army of run-of-the-mill petty bourgeois
with their women have been padfied and are simply delighted.
Thus inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshalc a hl p!
stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the"
fight for the ‘remaking’ of the Reich as they call it.

Then, when election day is past and the parliamentarians have
held their last mass meeting in five years, to turn from the train-
ing of the plebs to their higher and more agreeable tasks, the
program commission again dissolves and the fight for the re-
modeling of things again takes the form of a struggle for daily
bread: which in parliament is known as attendance fees.

Every morning Mr. People’s deputy betakes himself to the
exalted House, and even if he doesn’t go in aU the way, he at
least goes as far as the anteroom where the attendance lists are
kept. Aggressively serving the people, he there enters his name
and as well-deserved reward accepts a small remuneration for,
these continuous and exhausting exertions. .y <■ c y'

After four years, or otherwise during critical weeks when the
dissolution of the parliamentary bodies begins to loom closer and
closer, an unconquerable urge suddenly comes over the gentle-
men. Just as a caterpillar cannot help turning into a butterfly, \
these parliamentary larvae leave their parliamentary cocoons
and, endowed with wings, fly out among the beloved people.
Again they talk to their voters, speak of the enormous work they
have done and the malignant stubbornness of their opponents,
but the incomprehensible masses, instead of gratefully applaud-
ing, sometimes hurl vulgar, even bitter, epithets at their heads.
If this ingratitude on the part of the people rises to a certain de-
gree, only a single means can help: the party’s sheen must be
brushed off, the program needs improvement, the commission
comes back to life, and the swindle begins again from the begin-
ning. In view of the granite stupidity of our humanity, we have
no need to be surprised at the outcome. Led by their press and
dazzled by a new and alluring program, the ‘bourgeois’ as well
as the ‘proletarian’ voting cattle retium to the common stable
and again vote for their old misleaders.

376

Mein Kampf

Thus, the man of the people and the candidate of the working
rlasgps turns himself back into the parliamentary caterpillar and
again fattens on the foliage of state life, and again after four
years turns back into a gleaming butterfly.

There is scarcely an)rthing more depressing than to observe this
whole process in the light of sober reality, to be obliged to witness
this constantly repeated deception.

From such spiritual soil the bourgeois camp, you may be as-
sured, cannot draw the strength to carry on the struggle with the
organized power of Marxism.

And of this the gentlemen never think seriously. In view of all
the admitted narrow-mindedness and mental inferiority of these
parliamentary medicine-men of the white race, they themselves
cannot seriously imagine that by way of Western democracy they
can fight against a doctrine for which democracy, along with
everything connected with it, is at best a means used to paralyze
the adversary and to create a free path for its own activity.
Though at present a part of the Marxists shrewdly try to pretend
that they are inseparably linked with the principles of democracy,
do not forget if you please that in the critical hour these gentle-
men didn’t care a damn about a majority decision in the Western-
democratic sense ! This was in the days when the bourgeois parlia-
mentarians saw the security of the Reich guaranteed by the mon-
umental small-mindedness of a superior number, while the Marx-
ists, with a band of bums, deserters, party bosses, and Jewish
journalists, abruptly seized power, thus giving democracy a re-
sounding slap in the face. So it really takes the credulous mind of
one of these parliamentary medicine-men of bourgeois democracy
to imagine that now or in the future the brutal determination of
those interested in and supporting that world plague could be
exorcised merely by the magic formulas of a Western parliamenta-
rianism.

The Marxists will march with democracy until they succeed in
indirectly obtaining for their criminal aims the support of even
the national intellectual world, destined by them for extermina-
tion. If today they came to the conviction that from the witches’

Marxism and Democratic Principle

377

cauldron of our parliamentary democracy a majority could be
brewed, which — and even if only on the basis of its legislating
majority — would seriously attack Marxism, the parliamentary
jugglery would come to an end at once. The banner-bearers of
the Red International would then, instead of addressing an appeal
to the democratic conscience, emit a fiery call to the proletarian
masses, and their struggle at one stroke would be removed from
the stuffy air of our parliamentary meeting halls to the factories
and the streets. Democracy would be done for immediately;
what the mental dexterity of those people’s apostles in the parlia-
ments had failed to do, the crowbar and sledgehammer of incited
proletarian masses would instantly succeed in doing, as in the
fall of 1918: they would drive it home to the bourgeois world how
insane it is to imagine that they can oppose Jewish world domina-
tion with the methods of Western democracy.

As I have said, it requires a credulous mind to bind oneself,
in facing such a player, by rules which for him are only good for
bluff or his own profit, and are thrown overboard as soon as they
cease to be to his advantage.

Since with all parties of a so-called bourgeois orientation in
reality the whole political struggle actually consists in not hing
but a mad rush for seats in parliament, in which convictions and
principles are thrown overboard like sand ballast whenever it
seems expedient, their programs are naturally tuned accordingly
and — inversely, to be sure — their forces also measured by the
same standard. They lack that great magnetic attraction which
alone the masses always follow under the compelling impact of
towering great ideas, the persuasive force of absolute belief in
them, coupled with a fanatical courage to fight for them.

At a time when one side, armed with all the weapons of a pkilos-
ophy, a thousand times criminal though it may be, sets out to storm
an existing order, the other side, now and forever can ojfer resistance
only if it clads itself in the forms of a new faith, in our case a politi-
cal one, and for a weak-kneed, cowardly defensive substiUites the
battle-cry of courageous and bnital attack. And so, if today our
movement gets the witty reproach that it is working toward a

378

Mein Kampf

‘resoMion,’ especially from the so-called national bourgeois min-
sters, say of the Bavarian Center, the only answer we can give
one of political twerps S this: Yes, indeed, we are trying to make
up for what you in your criminal stupidity failed to do. By
the principles of your parliamentary cattle-trading, you helped to
drag the nation into the abyss; but we, in the form of attack
and by setting up a new philosophy of life and by fanatically and
indomitably defending its principles, shall build for our people
the steps on which it will some day climb back into the temple of
freedom.

And so, in the founding period of our movement, our first con-
cern had always to be directed toward preventing the host of
warriors for an exalted conviction from becoming a mere club for
the advancement of parliamentary interests.

The first precautionary measure was the creation of a program
which aimed at a development which by its very inner greatness
seemed apt to scare away the small and feeble spirits of our pres-
ent party politicians.

How correct was our conception of the necessity of programma-
tic aims of the sharpest stamp could be seen most clearly from
those catastrophic weaknesses which finally led to the collapse
of Germany.

From the realization of these weaknesses a new state concep-
tion, which in itself in turn is an essential ingredient of a new
world conception, would inevitably take form.

* * *

In the first volume I have dealt with the word ‘folkish,’ in so
far as I was forced to establish that this term seems inadequately
defined to permit the formation of a solid fi ghting community.
AU sorts of people, with a yawning gulf between everything es-
sential in their opinions, are running around today vmder the
blanket term ‘folkish.’ Therefore, before I proceed to the tasks
and aims of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, I

The ‘Folkish’ Concept 379

should like to give a clarification of the concept 'fo lkish / as well
as its relation to the party movement.

The concept ‘folkish' seems as vaguely defined, open to as
many interpretations and as unlimited in practical application
as, for instance, the word ‘religious,’ and it is very hard to con-
ceive of anything absolutely precise under this designation,
either in the sense of intellectual comprehension or of practical
effects. The designation 'religious’ only becomes tangibly con-
ceivable in the moment when it becomes connected with a defi-
nitely outlined form of its practice. It is a very lovely statement
and usually apt, to describe a man’s nature as ‘profoundly relig-
ious.’ Perhaps there are a few people who feel satisfied by such a
very general description, to whom it can even convey a definite,
more or less sharp, picture of that soul-state. But, since the great
masses consist neither of philosophers nor of saints, such a very
general religious idea will as a rule mean to the individual only
the liberation of his individual thought and action, without, how-
ever, leading to that efficacy which arises from religious inner
longing in the moment when, from the purely metaphysical in-
finite world of ideas, a clearly delimited faith forms. Assuredly,
this is not the end in itself, but only a means to the end; yet it is
the indispensably necessary means which alone makes possible
the achievement of the end. This end, however, is not only ideal,
but in the last malysis also eminently practical. And in general
we must clearly acknowledge the fact that the highest ideals al-
ways correspond to a deep vital necessity, just as the nobility
of the most exalted beauty lies in the last analysis only in what is
logically most expedient.

By helping to raise man above the level of bestial vegetation,
faith contributes in reality to the securing and safeguarding of his
existence. Take away from present-day mankind its education-
based, religious-dogmatic principles — or, practically speaking,
ethical-moral principles — by abolishing this religious education,
but without replacing it by an equivalent, and the result will be
a grave shock to the foundations of their existence. We may
therefore state that not only does man live in order to serve higher

380

Mein Kampf

ideab, but that, conversely, these higher ideals also provide the
premise for his existence. Thus the circle closes. //

Of course, even the general designation ‘religious’ includes
various basic ideas or convictions, for example, the indestruc-
tibility of the soul, the eternity of its existence, the existence of a
higher being, etc. But all these ideas, regardless how convincing
they may be for the individual, are submitted to the critical ex-
amination of this individual and hence to a fluctuating affirma-
tion or negation until emotional divination or knowledge assumes
the binding force of apodictic faith. This, above aU, is the fight-
ing factor which makes a breach and opens the way for the recog-
nition of basic religious views.

Without clearly delimited faith, religiosity with its unclarity
and multiplicity of form would not only be worthless for human
life, but would probably contribute to general disintegration.

The situation with the term ‘folkish’ is similar to that with the
term ‘religious.’ In it, too, there lie various basic realizations.
Though of eminent importance, they are, however, so unclearly
defined in form that they rise above the value of a more or less
acceptable opinion only if they are fitted into the framework of a
political party as basic elements. For the realization of philosophi-
cal ideals and of the demands derived from them no more occurs
through men’s pure feeling or inner 'mil in themselves than the
achievement of freedom through the general longing for it. No, only
when the ideal urge for independence gets a fighting organization in
the form of military instruments of power can the pressing desire of
a people he transformed into glorious reality.

Every philosophy of life, erven if it is a thousand times correct and
of highest benefit to humanity, will remain without significance for
the practical shaping of a people’s life, as long as its principles heme
not become the banner of a fighting movement which for its part in
turn will be a party as long as its activity has not found completion
in the victory of its ideas and its party dogmas have not become the
new state principles of a people's community.

But if a spiritual conception of a general nature is to serve as
a foimdation for a future development, the first presupposition is

From Political Creed to Fighting Community 381

to obtain unconditional clarity with regard to the nature, essence,
and scope of this conception, since only on such a basis can a move-
ment be formed which by the inner homogeneity of its convic-
tions can develop the necessary force for struggle. From general
ideas a political program must be stamped, from a general phil-
osophy of life a definite political faith. The latter, since its goal
must be practically attainable, will not only have to serve the
idea in itself, but will also have to take into consideration the
means of struggle which are available and must be used for the
achievement of this idea. The abstractly correct spiritual con-
ception, which the theoretician has to proclaim, must be coupled
with the practical knowledge of the politician. And so an eternal
ideal, serving as the guiding star of mankind, must unfortunately
resign itself to taking the weaknesses of this mankind into con-
sideration, if it wants to avoid shipwreck at the very outset on
the shoals of general human inadequacy. To draw from the
realm of the eternally true and ideal that which is humanly pos-
sible for small mortals, and make it take form, the search after
truth must be coupled with knowledge of the people’s psyche.

This transformation of a general, philosophical, ideal concep-
tion of the highest truth into a definitely delimited, tightly or-
ganized political community of faith and struggle, unified in
spirit and will, is the most significant achievement, since on its
happy solution alone the possibility of the victory of an idea de-
pends. From the army of often millions of men, who as individ-
uals more or less clearly and definitely sense these truths, and in
part perhaps comprehend them, one man must step forward who
with apodictic force will form granite principles from the waver-
ing idea-world of the broad masses and take up the struggle for
their sole correctness, imtil from the shifting waves of a free
thought-world there will arise a brazen cliff of solid unity in faith
and will.

The general right for such an activity is based on necessity, the
personal right on success.

382

Mein Kaupe

K from the word ‘folkish’ we try to peel out the innermost
kernel of meaning, we arrive at the following:

Our present political world view, current in Germany, is based
in general on the idea that creative, culture-creating force must
indeed be attributed to the state, but that it has nothing to do
with racial considerations, but is rather a product of economic
necessities, -or, at best, the natural result of a political urge for
power. This underl3Tng view, if logically developed, leads not
only to a mistaken conception of basic racial forces, but also to
an underestimation of the indhidual. For a denial of the differ-
ence between the various races with regard to their general cul-
ture-creating forces must necessarily extend this greatest of all
errors to the judgment of the individual. The assumption of the
equality of the races then becomes a basis for a similar way of
^newing peoples and finally individual men. And hence interna-
tional Marxism itself is only the transference, by the Jew, Karl
Marx, of a philosophical attitude and conception, which had actu-
ally long been in existence, into the form of a definite political
creed. Without the subsoil of such generally existing poisoning,
the amazing success of this doctrine would never have been pos-
sible. Actually Karl Marx was only the one among millions who,
with the sure eye of the prophet, recognized in the morass of a
slowly decomposing world the most essential poisons, extracted
them, and, like a wizard, prepared them into a concentrated solu-
tion for the swifter annihilation of the independent existence of
free nations on this earth. And all this in the service of his race.

His Marxist doctrine is a brief spiritual extract of the philoso-
phy of life that is generally current today. And for this reason
alone any struggle of our so-called bourgeois world against it is
impossible, absurd in fact, since this bourgeois world is also es-
sentially infected by these poisons, and worships a view of life
which in general is distinguished from the Marxists only by de-
grees and personalities. The bourgeois world is Marxist, but be-
lieves in the possibility of the rule of certain groups of men (bour-
geoisie), while Marxism itself systematically plans to hand the
world over to the Jews.

Folkish View of Race and Personality

383

In opposition to this, the folkish philosophy finds the impor-
tance of mankind in its basic racial elements. In the state it sees
on principle only a means to an end and construes its end as the
preservation of the racial existence of man. Thus, it by no means
believes in an equality of the races, but along with their difference
it recognizes their higher or lesser value and feels itself obligated,
through this knowledge, to promote the victory of the better and
stronger, and demand the subordination of the inferior and weaker
in accordance with the eternal will that dominates this universe.
Thus, in principle, it serves the basic aristocratic idea of Nature
and believes in the validity of this law down to the last individual.
It sees not only the different value of the races, but also the differ-
ent value of individuals. From the mass it extracts the impor-
tance of the individual personality, and thus, in contrast to dis-
organizing Marxism, it has an organizing effect. It believes in the
necessity of an idealization of humanity, in which alone it sees
the premise for the existence of humanity. But it cannot grant
the right to existence even to an ethical idea if this idea represents
a danger for the racial life of the bearers of a higher ethics; for in
a bastardized and niggerized world all the concepts of the hu-
manly beautiful and sublime, as well as all ideas of an idealized
future of our humanity, would be lost forever.

Human culture and civilization on this continent are insepara-
bly bound up with the presence of the Aryan. If he dies out or
declines, the dark veils of an age without culture will again de-
scend on this globe.

The undermining of the existence of human culture by the
destruction of its bearer seems in the eyes of a folkish philosophy
the most execrable crime. Anyone who dares to lay hands on the
highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevo-
lent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from
paradise.

And so the folkish philosophy of life corresponds to the inner-
most will of Nature, since it restores that free play of forces which
must lead to a continuous mutual higher breeding, until at last,
the best of humanity, having achieved possession of this earth.

384

Mein Kaufe

will have a free path for activity in domains which will lie partly
above it and partly outside it.

We all sense that in the distant future humanity must be faced
by problems which only a highest race, become master people
and supported by the means and possibilities of an entire globe,
will be equipped to overcome.

* * *

It is self-evident that so general a statement of the meaningful
content of a folkish philosophy can be interpreted in thousands
of ways. And actually we find hardly a one of our newer political
formations which does not base itself in one way or another on
this world view. And, by its very existence in the face of the many
others, it shows the difference of its conceptions. And so the
Marxist world view, led by a unified top organization, is opposed
by a hodge-podge of views which even as ideas are not very im-
pressive in face of the solid, hostile front. Victories are not gained
by such feeble weapons ! Not until the international world view —
politically led by organized Marxism — is confronted by a folkish
world view, organized and led with equal unity, will success,
supposing the fighting energy to be equal on both sides, faU to
the side of eternal truth.

A philosophy can only be organizationally comprehended on the
basis of a definite formulation of that philosophy, and what dogmas
represent for religious faith, party principles are for a political
party in the making.

Hence an instrument must be created for the folkish world view
which enables it to fight, just as the Marxist party organization
creates a free path for internationalism.

This is the goal pursued by the National Socialist German
Workers’ Party.

That such a party formulation of the folkish concept is the pre-
condition for the victory of the fo lkis h philosophy of life is proved
most sharply by a fact which is admitted indirectly at least by the

Organization of a Party

385

enemies of such a party tie. Those very people who never weary
of emphasizing that the folkish philosophy is not the ‘hereditary
estate ’ of an individual, but that it slumbers or ‘lives ’ in the hearts
of God knows how many millions, thus demonstrate the fact that
the general existence of such ideas was absolutely unable to pre-
vent the victory of the hostile world view, classically represented
by a political party. If this were not so, the German people by
this time would have been bound to achieve a gigantic victory
and not be standing at the edge of an abyss. What gave the inter-
national world view success was its representation by a political
party organized into storm troops; what caused the defeat of the
opposite world view was its lack up to now of a unified body to
represent it. Not by unlimited freedom to interpret a general
view, but only in the limited and hence integrating form of a
political organization can a world view fight and conquer.

Therefore, I saw my own task especially in extracting those
nuclear ideas from the extensive and unshaped substance of a
general world view and remolding them into more or less dogmatic
forms which in their clear delimitation are adapted for holding
solidly together those men who swear allegiance to them. In
other words: From the basic ideas of a general folkish world concep-
tion the National Socialist German Workers’ Party takes over the
essential fundamental traits, and from them, with due consideration
of practiced reality, the times, and the available human material as
well as its weaknesses, forms a political creed which, in turn, by the
strict organizational integration of large human masses thus made
Possible, creates the precondition for the victorious struggle of this
world view.

CHAPTER

II

The State

1920 to 1921, time and again the circles
of the present outlived bourgeois world held it up to our yoimg
movement that our attitude toward the present-day state was
negative, which made the political crooks of all tendencies feel
justified in undertaking to suppress the young prophet of a new
world view with all possible means. Of course they purposely
forgot that the present bourgeois world itself can no longer form
any unified picture of the state concept, that there neither is nor
can be any uniform definition of it. For the explainers usually sit
in our state universities in the form of political law professors, |
whose highest task it must be to find explanations and interpreta- 1
lions for the more or less unfortunate existence of their momen - 1
tary source of bread. The more impossible the nature of such a ;
state is, the more opaque, artificial, and unintelligible are the defin-
itions regarding the purpose of its existence. What, for example,
could a royal and imperial university professor formerly write
about the sense and purpose of the state in a country whose
state existence embodied the greatest monstrosity of the twen-
tieth century? A grave task if we consider that for the present-
day teacher of political law there is less obligation to truth than
bondage to a defimte purpose. And the purpose is: preservation
at any price of the current monstrosity of human mechanism,*
now called state. We have no call to be surprised if in the dis-
' ‘Ein Monstrum von mmscMichem Mechanimus.’

Three Main Conceptions op the State

387

cussion of this problem practical criteria are avoided as much as
possible, and instead the professors dig themselves into a hodge-
podge of ‘ethical,’ ‘moral,’ and other ideal values, tasks, and
aims.

In general three conceptions can be distinguished:

(a) The troop of those who regard the state simply as a more or
less voluntary grouping of people under a governmental power.

This group is the most numerous. In its ranks are found partic-
ularly the worshipers of our present-day principle of legitimacy,
in whose eyes the will of the people plays no r61e in this whole
matter. According to these saints, a sacred inviolability is based
on the mere fact of the state’s existence. To protect this madness
of human brains, a positively dog-like veneration of so-called
staie authority is needed. In the minds of such people a means
becomes an ultimate end in the twinkling of an eye. The state no
longer exists to serve men; men exist in order to worship a state
authority which embraces even the most humble spirit, provided
he is in any sense an official. Lest this condition of silent, ecstatic
veneration turn into one of unrest, the state authority for its
part exists only to maintain peace and order. It, too, is now an
end and no longer a means.^ State authority must provide for
peace and order, and peace and order in turn must conversely
make possible the existence of state authority. Within these
two poles all life must now revolve.

In Bavaria, such a conception is primarily represented by the
political artists of the Bavarian Center, known as the ‘Bavarian
People’s Party’; in Austria, it was the Black-and-YeUow Legiti-
mists; in the Reich itself, unfortunately, it is often so-called con-
servative elements whose conception of the state moves along
these paths.

(b) The second group of people is somewhat smaller in number,
since among it must be reckoned those who at least attach a few
conditions to the existence of the state. They desire not only

^ ‘«n Zweck.’ Second edition changes this to *kei» Zweck,’ though this
may be a mispiint. The meaning then would be: 'no longer an end or a
means.’

388

Mein Kahfe

uniform administration, but also, if possible, uniform language —
if only for general technical reasons of administration. State
authority is no longer the sole and exclusive purpose of the state,
but to it is added the promotion of the subjects’ welfare. Ideas of
‘freedom,’ mostly of a misimderstood nature, inject themselves
into the state conceptions of these circles. The form of govern-
ment no longer seems inviolable by the mere fact of its existence,
but is examined as to its expediency. The sanctity of age offers
no protection against the criticism of the present. Furthermore,
it is a conception which expects that the state above aU will
beneficially shape the economic life of the individual, and which;
therefore judges on the basis of practical criteria and general
economic conceptions of the profitable. We find the main repre-^
sentatives of these views in the circles of our normal German
bourgeoisie, especially in those of our liberal democracy.

(c) The third group is numerically the weakest.

It regards the state as a means for the realization of usually
very imdearly conceived aims of a state-people linguistically
stamped and united. The will for a uniform state language is
here expressed, not only in the hope of giving this state a founda-
tion capable of supporting an outward increase of power, but not
less in the opinion — basically erroneous, incidentally — that
this will make it possible to carry through a nationalization in a
definite direction.

In the last himdred years it has been a true misery to observe
how these drcles, sometimes in the best good faith, played with
the word ‘ Germanize.' I myself stiU remember how in my youth
thijj very term led to incredibly false conceptions. Even in Pan-
German circles the opinion could then be heard that the Austrian-
Germans, with the promotion and aid of the government, might
weU succeed in a Germanization of the Austrian Slavs; these cir-
cles never even began to realize that Germanizaiion can only be
applied to soil and never to people. For what was generally un-
derstood under this word was only the forced outward acceptance
of the German language. But it is a scarcely conceivable fallacy
of thought to believe that a Negro or a Chinese, let us say, will

False Conceptions op ‘ Germanization ’

389

turn into a German because be learns German and is willing to
speaJc the German language in the future and perhaps even give
his vote to a German political party. That any such Germaniza-
tion is in reality a de-Germanization never became clear to our
bourgeois national world. For if today, by forcing a universal
language on them, obvious differences between different peoples
are bridged over and finally effaced, this means the beginning of a
bastardization, and hence in our case not a Germanization but a
destruction of the Germanic element. Only too frequently does
it occur in history that conquering people’s outward instruments
of power succeed in forcing their language on oppressed peoples,
but that after a thousand years their language is spoken by an-
other people, and the victors thereby actually become the van-
quished.

Since nationality or rather race does not happen to lie in lan-
guage but in the blood, we would only be justified in speaking of a
Germanization if by such a process we succeeded in transforming
the blood of the subjected people. But this is impossible. Unless
a blood mixture brings about a change, which, however, means
the lowering of the level of the higher race. The final result of
such a process would consequently be the destruction of precisely
those qualities which had formerly made the conquering people
capable of victory. Especially the cultural force would vanish
through a mating with the lesser race, even if the resulting mon-
grels spoke the language of the earlier, higher race a thousand
times over. For a time, a certain struggle will take place between
the different mentalities, and it may be that the steadily sinking
people, in a last quiver of life, so to speak, will bring to light sur-
prising cultural values. But these are only individual elements
belonging to the higher race, or perhaps bastards in whom, after
the first crossing, the better blood stiU predominates and tries to
struggle through; but never final products of a mixtiure. In them
a culturally backward movement will always manifest itself.

Today it must be regarded as a good fortune that a Germaniza- •
tion as intended by Joseph II in Austria was not carried out. Its
result would probably have been the preservation of the Austrian

390

Mein Kampf

state, but also the lowering of the radal level of the German narion
induced by a linguistic union. In the course of the centuries a
certain herd instinct would doubtless have crystallized out, but
the herd itself would have become inferior. A state-people would
perhaps have been born, but a culture-people would have been
lost.

For the German nation it was better that such a process of mix-
ture did not take place, even if this was not due to a noble in-
sight, but to the shortsighted narrowness of the Habsburgs. If
it had turned out differently, the German people could scarcely
be regarded as a cultural factor.

Not only in Austria, but in Germany as well, so-called national
circles were moved by similar false ideas. The Polish policy, de-
manded by so many, involving a Germanization of the East, was
unfortunately based on the same false inference. Here again it
was thought that a Germanization of the Polish element could
be brought about by a purely linguistic integration with the
German element. Here again the result would have been cata-
strophic; a people of ahen race expressing its alien ideas in the
German language, compromising the lofty dignity of our own
nationality by their own inferiority.

How terrible is the damage indirectly done to our Germanism
today by the fact that, due to the ignorance of many Americans,
the German- jabbering Jews, when they set foot on American soil,
are booked to our German accoimt. Surely no one will call the
purely external fact that most of this lice-ridden migration from
the East speaks German a proof of their German origin and na-
tionality.

Wh<U has been profitably Germanized in history is the soil which
our ancestors acquired by the sword and settled with German peas-
ants. In so far as they directed foreign blood into our national body
in this process, they contributed to that catastrophic splintering of
our inner being which is expressed in German super-individualism
— o phenomenon, I am sorry to say, which is praised in many
quarters.

Also in this third group, the state in a certain sense still passes

The State Is Not an End in Itself

391

as an end in itself, and the preservation of the state, conse-
quently, as the highest task of human existence.

In summing up we can state the following : All these views have
their deepest root, not in the knowledge that the forces which
create culture and values are based essentially on racial elements
and that the state must, therefore, in the light of reason, regard
its highest task as the preservation and intensification of the race,
this fundamental condition of all human cultural development.

It was the Jew, Karl Marx, who was able to draw the extreme
inference from those false conceptions and views concerning the
nature and purpose of a state: by detaching the state concept from
racial obligations without being able to arrive at any other
equally acknowledged formulation, the bourgeois world even
paved the way for a doctrine which denies the state as such.

Even in this field, therefore, the struggle of the bourgeois
world against the Marxist international must fail completely. It
long since sacrificed the foundations which would have been in-
dispensably necessary for the support of its own ideological
world. Their shrewd foe recognized the weaknesses of their own
structure and is now storming it with the weapons which they
themselves, even if involuntarily, provided.

It is, therefore, the first obligation of a new movement, stand-
ing on the ground of a folkish world view, to make sure that its
conception of the nature and purpose of the state attains a uni-
form and clear character.

Thus the basic realization is: tJiat the state represents no end, but
a means. It is, to be sure, the premise for the formation of a higher
human culture, but not its cause, which lies exclusively in the exist-
ence of a race capable of culture. Hundreds of exemplary states
might exist on earth, but if the Aryan culture-bearer died out,
there would be no culture corresponding to the spiritual level of
the highest peoples of today. We can go even farther and say that
the fact of human state formation would not in the least exclude
the possibility of the destruction of the human race, provided that
superior intellectual ability and elasticity would be lost due to the
absence of their racial bearers.

392

Mein Kampf

If today, for example, the surface of the earth were upset by
some tectonic event and a new Himalaya rose from the ocean
floods, by one single cruel catastrophe the culture of humanity
would be destroyed. No state would exist any longer, the bands
of aU order would be dissolved, the documents of millennial de-
velopment would be shattered — a single great field of corpses
covered by water and mud. But if from this chaos of horror even
a few men of a certain race capable of culture had been preserved,
the earth, upon settling, if only after thousands of years, would
again get proofs of human creative power. Only the destruction
of the last race capable of culture and its individual members
wo\ild desolate the earth for good. Conversely, we can see even by
examples from the present that state formations in their tribal
beginnings can, if their racial supporters lack suf&cient genius,
not preserve them from destruction. Just as great animal species
of prehistoric times had to give way to others and vanish without
trace, man must also give way if he lacks a definite spiritual force
which alone enables him to find the necessary weapons for his
self-preservation.

The state in itself does not create a specific cultural level; it
can only preserve the race which conditions this level. Otherwise
the state as such may continue to exist unchanged for centuries
while, in consequence of a racial mixture which it has not pre-
vented, the cultural capacity of a people and the general aspect
of its life conditioned by it have long since suffered a profoimd
change. The present-day state, for example, may very well simu-
late its existence as a formal mechanism for a certain length of
time, but the racial poisoning of our national body creates a cul-
tural decline which even now is terrifyingly manifest.

Thus, the precondition for the existence of a higher humanity is
not the state, but the nation possessing the necessary ability.

This ability will fundamentally always be present and must
only be aroused to practical realization by certain outward con-
ditions. Culturally and creatively gifted nations, or rather races,
bear these useful qualities latent within them, even if at the
moment unfavorable outward conditions do not permit a realiza-

National Socialist Conception of the State 393

tion of these latent tendencies. Hence it is an unbelievable of-
fense to represent the Germanic peoples of the pre-Christian era
as 'cultureless/ as barbarians. That they never were. Only the
harshness of their northern homeland forced them into circum-
stances which thwarted the development of their creative forces.
If, without any ancient world, they had come to the more favor-
able regions of the south, and if the material provided by lower
peoples had given them their first technical implements, the cul-
ture-creating ability slumbering within them would have grown
into radiant bloom just as happened, for example, with the Greeks.
But this primeval culture-creating force itself arises in turn not
from the northern climate alone. The Laplander, brought to
the south, would be no more culture-creating than the Eskimo.
For this glorious creative ability was given only to the Aryan,
whether he bears it dormant within himself or gives it to awaken-
ing life, depending whether favorable circumstances permit this
or an inhospitable Nature prevents it.

From this the following realization results:

The state is a means to an end,. Its end lies in the preservation
and advancement of a community of physically and psychically
homogeneous creatures. This preservation itself comprises first of all
existence as a race and thereby permits the free development of all the
forces dormant in this race. Of them a part mil always primarily
serve the preservation of physical life, and only the remaining part
the promotion of a further spiritual development. Actually the one
always creates the precondition for the other.

States which do not serve this purpose are misbegotten, monstrosi-
ties in fact. The fact of their existence changes this no more than the
sttccess of a gang of bandits can justify robbery.

We National Socialists as champions of a new philosophy of
life must never base ourselves on so-called ‘accepted facts’ —
and false ones at that. If we did, we would not be the cham-
pions of a new great idea, but the coolies of the present-day lie.
We must dis tinguis h in the sharpest way between the state as a
vessel and the race as its content. This vessel has meaning only
if it can preserve and protect the content; otherwise it is useless.

394

Meix Kampf

Thus, the highest purpose of a folkish state is concern for the pres-
ervation of those original racial elements which bestow culture and
create the beauty and dignity of a higher mankind. We, as Aryans,
can conceive of the state only as the living organism of a nationality
winch not only assures the preservation of this nationality, but by
the development of its spiritual and ideal ahilities leads it to the high-
est freedom.

But what they try to palm off on us as a state today is usually
nothing but a monstrosity bom of deepest human error, with un-
told misery as a consequence.

We National Socialists know that with this conception we stand
as revolutionaries in the world of today and are also branded as
such. But our thoughts and actions must in no way be deter-
mined by the approval or disapproval of our time, but by the
binding obligation to a tmth which we have recognized. Then
we may be convinced that the higher insight of posterity will
not only understand our actions of today, but will also confirm
their correctness and exalt them.

* * *

From this, we National Socialists derive a standard for the
evaluation of a state. This value will be relative from the stand-
point of the individual nationality, absolute from that of human-
ity as such. This means, in other words:

The quality of a state cannot be evaluated according to the cultural
level or the power of this state in the frame of the outside world, but
solely and exclusively by the degree of this institution’s virtue for the
nationality involved in each special case.

A state can be designated as exemplary if it is not only com-
patible with the living conditions of the nationality it is intended
to represent, but if in practice it keeps this nationality alive by
its own very existence — quite regardless of the importance of this
state formation within the framework of the outside world. For
the function of the state is not to create abilities, but only to open

Criteria for the Evaluation of a State

395

the road for those forces which are present. Thus, conversely, a
state can be designated as bad if, despite a high cultural level, it
dooms the bearer of this culture in his racial composition. For thus
it destroys to all intents and purposes the premise for the survival
of this culture which it did not create, but which is the fruit of
a culture-creating nationality safeguarded by a living integration
through the state. The state does not represent the content, but
a form. A people's cultural level at any time does not, therefore,
provide a standard for measuring the quality of the state in which
it lives. It is easily understandable that a people highly endowed
with culture offers a more valuable picture than a Negro tribe;
nevertheless, the state organism of the former, viewed according
to its fulfillment of purpose, can be inferior to that of the Negro.
Though the best state and the best state form are not able to ex-
tract from a people abilities which are simply lacking and never
did exist, a bad state is assuredly able to kiU originally existing
abilities by permitting or even promoting the destruction of the
racial culture-bearer.

Hence our judgment concerning the quality of a state can prim-
arily be determined only by the relative utility it possesses for a
definite nationality, and in no event by the intrinsic importance
attributable to it in the world.

This relative judgment can be passed quickly and easily, but
the judgment concerning absolute value only with great difficulty,
since this absolute judgment is no longer determined merely by
the state, but by the quality and level of the nationality in ques-
tion.

If, therefore, we speak of a higher mission of the state, we must
not forget that the higher mission lies essentially in the national-
ity whose free development the state must merely make possible
by the organic force of its being.

Hence, if we propound the question of how the state which we
Germans need should be constituted, we must first clearly under-
stand what kind of people it is to contain and what purpose it
is to serve.

Our German nationality, unfortunately, is no longer based on a

396

Mein Kampe

unified racial nucleus. The blending process of the various original
components has advanced so far that we might speak of a new
race. On the contrary, the poisonings of the blood which have be-
fallen our people, especially since the Thirty Years’ War, have led
not only to a decomposition of our blood, but also of our soul. The
open borders of our fatherland, the association with un-German
foreign bodies along these frontier districts, but above aU the
strong and continuous influx of foreign blood into the interior of
the Reich itself, due to its continuous renewal, leaves no time for
an absolute blending. No new race is distilled out, the racial con-
stituents remain side by side, with the result that, especially in
critical moments in which otherwise a herd habitually gathers to-
gether, the German people scatters to all the four winds. Not
only are the basic racial elements scattered territorially, but on a
small scale within the same territory. Beside Nordic men East-
erners, beside Easterners Dinarics, beside both of these West-
erners, and mixtures in between. On the one hand, this is a great
disadvantage: the German people lack that sure herd instinct
which is based on unity of the blood and, especially in moments
of threatening danger, preserves nations from destruction in so
far as all petty inner differences in such peoples vanish at once on
such occasions and the solid front of a unified herd confronts the
common enemy. This co-existence of unblended basic racial ele-
ments of the most varying kind accounts for what is termed
hyper-individtialism in Germany. In peaceful periods it may some-
times do good services, but taking aU things together, it has
robbed us of world domination. If the German people in its his-
toric development had possessed that herd unity which other
peoples enjoyed, the German Reich today would doubtless be
mistress of the globe. World history would have taken a different
course, and no one can distinguish whether in this way we would
not have obtained what so many blinded pacifists today hope to
gain by begging, whining, and whimpering: a peace, supported not
by the palm branches of tearful, pacifist female mourners, but based
on the victorious sword of a master people, putting the world into the
service of a higher culture.

Consequences of Our Racial Division

397

The fact of the non-existence of a nationality of unified blood
has brought us untold misery. It has given capital cities to many
small German potentates, but deprived the German people of the
master’s right.

Today our people are still suffering from this inner division; but
what brought us misfortune in the past and present can be our
blessing for the future. For detrimental as it was on the one hand
that a complete blending of our original racial components did
not take place, and that the formation of a unified national body
was thus prevented, it was equally fortunate on the other hand
that in this way at least a part of our best blood was preserved
pure and escaped racial degeneration.

Assuredly, if there had been a complete blending of our original
racial elements, a unified national body would have arisen; how-
ever, as every racial cross-breeding proves, it would have been
endowed with a smaller cultural capacity than the highest of the
original components originally possessed. This is the blessing of
the absence of complete blending: that today in our German na-
tional body we still possess great unmixed stocks of Nordic-
Germanic people whom we may consider the most precious
treasure for our future. In the confused period of ignorance of all
racial laws, when a man appeared to be simply a man, with full
equality — clarity may have been lacking with regard to the dif-
ferent value of the various original elements. Today we know that
a complete intermixtiure of the components of our people might,
in consequence of the unity thus produced, have given us outward
power, but that the highest goal of mankind would have been un-
attainable, since the sole bearer, whom Fate had clearly chosen
for this completion, would have perished in the general racial
porridge of the unified people.

But what, through none of our doing, a kind Fate prevented,
we must today examine and evaluate from the standpoint of
the knowledge we have now acquired.

Anyone who speaks of a mission of the German people on earth
must know that it can exist only in the formation of a state which sees
its highest task in the preservation and promotion of the most noble

398

Mein Kakpe

dements of our nationality, indeed of aU mankind, wMch still re-
main intact.

Thus, for the first time the state achieves a lofty inner goal.
Compared to the absurd catchword about safeguarding law and
order, thus laying a peaceable groundwork for mutual swindles,
the task of preserving and advancing the highest humanity, given
to this earth by the benevolence of the Almighty, seems a truly
high mission.

From a dead mechanism which only lays daim to existence for
its own sake, there must be formed a living organism with the
exdusive aim of serving a higher idea.

The German Reich as a state must embrace all Germans and has
the task, not only of assembling and preserving the most valuable
stocks of basic racial elements in this people, but slowly and surely of
raising them to a dominant position.

* * *

Thus, a condition which is fundamentally one of paralysis is
replaced by a period of struggle, but as everywhere and always
in this world, here, too, the saying remains valid that ‘ he who rests
— rusts,’ and, furthermore, that victory lies eternally and exdu-
sively in attack. The greater the goal we have in mind in our
struggle, and the smaller the understanding of the broad masses
for it may be at the moment, all the more gigantic, as the experi-
ence of world history shows, will be the success — and the signifi-
cance of this success if the goal is correctly comprehended and the
struggle is carried through with unswerving perseverance.

Of course it may be more soothing for many of our present of-
ficial helmsmen of the state to work for the preservation of an
existing condition than having to fight for a new one. They will
find it much easier to regard the state as a mechanism which
exists simply in order to keep itself alive, since in turn their lives
* belong to the state' — as they are accustomed to put it. As
though something which sprang from the nationality could

World History Is Made by Minorities

399

logically serve anything else than the nationality or man could
work for anything else than man. Of course, as I have said before,
it is easier to see in state authority the mere formal mechanism of an
organization than the sovereign embodiment of a nationality's in-
stinct of self-preservation on earth. For in the one case the state,
as well as state authority, is for these weak minds a purpose in it-
self, while in the other, it is only a mighty weapon in the service
of the great, eternal life struggle for existence, a weapon to which
everyone must submit because it is not formal and mechanical,
but the expression of a common will for preserving life.

Hence, in the struggle for our new conception, which is entirely
in keeping with the primal meaning of things, we shall find few
fellow warriors in a society which not only is physically senile but,
sad to say, usually, mentally as well. Only exceptions, old men
with young hearts and fresh minds, will come to us from those
classes, never those who see the ultimate meaning of their life
task in the preservation of an existing condition.

We are confronted by the endless army, not so much of the
deliberately bad as of the mentally lazy and indifferent, including
those with a stake in the preservation of the present condition.
But precisely in this apparent hopelessness of our gigantic strug-
gle lies the greatness of our task and also the possibility of our
success. The battle-cry which either scares away the small spirits
at the very start, or soon makes them despair, will be the signal
for the assemblage of real fighting natures. And this we must see
clearly: If in a people a certain amount of the highest energy and
active force seems concentrated upon one goal and hence is definitively
removed from the inertia of the broad masses, this small percentage
has risen to be master over the entire number. World history is made
by minorities when this minority of number embodies the majority
of will and determination.

What, therefore, may appear as a difficulty today is in reality
the premise for our victory. Precisely in the greatness and the diffi-
culties of our task lies the probability that only the best fighters wiU
step forward to struggle for it. And in this selection lies the guaranty
of success.

# * #

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Mein Kampf

In general, Nature herself usually makes certam corrective deri-
sions with regard to the racial purity of earthly creatures. She
has little love for bastards. Especially the first products of such
cross-breeding, say in the third, fourth, and fifth generation, suffer
bitterly. Not only is the value of the originally highest element of
the cross-breeding taken from them, but with their lack of blood
unity they lack also unity of will-power and determination to live.
In all critical moments in which the racially unified being makes
correct, that is, unified decisions, the racially divided one will be-
come uncertain; that is, he will arrive at half measures. Taken
together, this means not only a certain inferiority of the racially
divided being compared with the racially unified one, but in prac-
tice also the possibility of a more rapid decline. In innumerable
cases where race holds up, the bastard breaks down. In this, we must
see the correction of Nature. But often she goes even further.
She limits the possibility of propagation. Thereby she prevents
the fertility of continued crossings altogether and thus causes
them to die out.

If, for example, an individual specimen of a certain race were to
enter into a imion with a racially lower specimen, the result would
at first be a lowering of the standard in itself; but, in addition,
there would be a weakening of the offspring as compared to the
environment that had remained racially unmixed. If an influx
of fmther blood from the highest race were prevented entirely,
the bastards, if they continued mutually to cross, would either
die out because their power of resistance had been wisely dimin-
ished by Nature, or in the course of many mille nniums a new mix-
ture would form in which the original individual elements would
be completely blended by the thousandfold crossing and therefore
no longer recognizable. Thus a new nationality would have
I formed with a certain herd resistance, but, compared to the high-
est race participating in the first crossing, seriously reduced in
spiritual and cultural stature. But in this last case, moreover,
the hybrid product would succumb in the mutual struggle for
existence as long as a higher racial entity, which has remained
unmixed, is still present as an opponent. All the, herd solidarity

Natural Regeneration of Races

401

of this new people, formed in the course of thousands of years,
would, in consequence of the general lowering of the racial level
and the resultant diminution of spiritual elasticity and creative
ability, not suffice victoriously to withstand the struggle with an
equally unified, but spiritually and culturally superior race.

Hence we can establish the following valid statement:

Every racial crossing leads inemtahly sooner or later to the decline
of the hybrid product as long as the higher element of this crossing
is itself still existent in any kind of racial unity. The danger for
the hybrid product is eliminated only at the moment when the
last higher racial element is bastardized.

This is a basis for a natural, even though slow, process of re-
generation, which gradually eliminates racial poisonings as long
as a basic stock of racially pure elements is still present and a fur-
ther bastardization does not take place.

Such a process can begin of its own accord in creatures with a
strong racial instinct, who have only been thrown off the track of
normal, racially pure reproduction by special circumstances or
some special compulsion. As soon as this condition of compulsion
is ended, the part which has still remained pure will at once strive
again for mating among equals, thus calling a halt to further mix-
ture. The results of bastardization spontaneously recede to the
backgroimd, unless their number has increased so infinitely that
serious resistance on the part of those who have remained ra-
cially pure is out of the question.

Man, once he has lost his instinct and fails to recognize the
obligation imposed upon him by Nature, is on the whole not justi-
fied in hoping for such a correction on the part of Nature as long
as he has not replaced his lost instinct by perceptive knowledge;
this knowledge must then perform the required work of compen-
sation. Yet the danger is very great that the man who has once
grown blind will keep tearing down the racial barriers more and
more, until at length even the last remnant of his best part is lost.
Then in reality there remains nothing but a unified mash, such
as the famous world reformers of our days idealize; but in a short
time it would expel aU ideals from this world. Indeed: a great

402

Mein Kampf

herd could be formed in this way; a herd beast can be brewed from aU
sorts of ingredients, but a man who will be a culture-bearer, or even
better, a culture-founder and culture-creator, never arises from such a
mixture. The mission of humanity could then be looked upon as
finished.

Anyone who does not want the earth to move toward this con-
dition must convert himself to the conception that it is the func-
tion above all of the Germanic states first and foremost to call a
fundamental halt to any further bastardization.

The generation of our present notorious weaklings will ob-
viously cry out against this, and moan and complain about as-
saults on the holiest human rights. No, there is only one holiest
huimn right, and this right is at the same time the holiest obligation,
to wit: to see to it that the blood is preserved pure and, by preserving
the best humanity, to create the possibility of a nobler development of
these beings.

A folkish state must therefore begin by raising marriage from the
level of a continuous defilement of the race, and give it the consecra-
tion of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the
Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape.

The protest against this on so-called humane grounds is particu-
larly ill-suited to an era which on the one hand gives every de-
praved degenerate the possibility of propagating, but which bur-
dens the products themselves, as well as their contemporaries,
with untold suffering, while on the other hand every drug store
and our very street peddlers offer the means for the prevention
of births for sale even to the healthiest parents. In this present-
day state of law and order in the eyes of its representatives, this
brave, bourgeois-national society, the prevention of the procre-
ative faculty in sufferers from syphilis, tuberculosis, hereditary
diseases, cripples, and cretins is a crime, while the actual sup-
pression of the procreative faculty in millions of the very best
people is not regarded as an)rthing bad and does not offend
against the morals of this h)^ocritical society, but is rather a
benefit to its short-sighted mental laziness. For otherwise these
people would at least be forced to rack their brains about pro-

Folkish State and Racial Hygiene

403

viding a basis for the sustenance and preservation of those be-
ings who, as healthy bearers of our nationality, should one day
serve the same function with regard to the coming generation.

How boundlessly unideal and ignoble is this whole system!
People no longer bother to breed the best for posterity, but let
things slide along as best they can. If our churches also sin
against the image of the Lord, whose importance they s till so
highly emphasize, it is entirely because of the line of their present
activity which speaks always of the spirit and lets its bearer, the
man, degenerate into a depraved proletarian. Afterwards, of
course, they make foolish faces and are full of amazement at the
small effect of the Christian faith in their own country, at the
terrible ‘godlessness,’ at this physically botched and hence
spiritually degenerate rabble, and try with the Church’s Blessing,
to make up for it by success with the Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs.
While our European peoples, thank the Lord, fall into a condition
of physical and moral leprosy, the pious missionary wanders off
to Central Africa and sets up Negro missions until there, too, our
‘higher culture’ turns healthy, though primitive and inferior,
hiunan beings into a rotten brood of bastards.

It would be more in keeping with the intention of the noblest
man in this world if our two Christian churches, instead of an-
noying Negroes with missions which they neither desire nor un-
derstand, would kindly, but in all seriousness, teach our European
humanity that where parents are not healthy it is a deed pleasing
to God to take pity on a poor little healthy orphan child and give
him father and mother, than themselves to give birth to a sick
child who will only bring imhappiness and suffering on himself
and the rest of the world.

The folkish state must make up for what everyone else today
has neglected in this field. It must set race in the center of all life.
It must take care to keep it pure. It must declare the child to he the
most precious treasure of the people. It must see to it that only the
healthy beget children; that there is only one disgrace: despite one's
own sickness and deficiencies, to bring children into the world, and
one highest honor: to renounce doing so. And conversely it must ik

4D4

Mein Kampf

considered reprehensible: to withhold healthy children from the
nation. Here the state must act as the guardian of a millennial future
in the face of which the wishes and the selfishness of the individual
must appear as nothing and submit. It must put the most modern
medical means in the service of tins knowledge. It must declare unfit
for propagation all who are in any way visibly sick or who have in-
herited a disease and can therefore pass it on, and put this into actual
practice. Conversely, it must take care that the fertility of the healthy
woman is not limited by the financial irresponsibility of a state regime
which turns the blessing of children into a curse for the parents. It
must put an end to that lazy, nay criminal, indifierence with which
the social premises for a fecund family are treated today, and must
instead feel itself to he the highest guardian of this most precious
blessing of a people. Its concern belongs more to the child than to the
adult.

Those who are physically and mentally unhealthy and unworthy
must not perpetuate their suffering in the body of their children. In
this the folkish state must perform the most gigantic educational task.
And some day this will seem to be a greater deed than the most victori-
ous wars of our present bourgeois era. By education it must teach the
individual that it is no disgrace, but only a misfortune deserving of
pity, to be sick and weakly, but that it is a crime atid hence at the same
time a disgrace to dishonor one’s misfortune by one’s own egotism in
burdening innocent creatures with it; that by comparison it bespeaks
a nobility of highest idealism and the most admirable humanity if
the innocently sick, renouncing a child of his own, bestows his love
and tenderness upon a poor, unknown young scion of his own na-
tionality, who with his health promises to become some day a powerful
member of a powerful community. And in this educational work the
state must perform the purely intellectual complemetU of its practical
activity. It must act in this sense without regard to understanding or
lack of understanding, approval or disapproval.

A prevention of the faculty and opportunity to procreate on
the part of the physically degenerate and mentally sick, over a
period of only six hundred years, would not only free humanity
from an immeasurable misfortune, but would lead to a recovery

Folkish State and Racial Hygiene

405

which today seems scarcely conceivable. If the fertility of the
healthiest bearers of the nationality is thus consciously and
systematically promoted, the result will be a race which at least
will have eliminated the germs of our present physical and hence
spiritual decay.

For once a people and a state have started on this path, at-
tention win automatically be directed on increasing the racially
most valuable nucleus of the people and its fertility, in order
ultimately to let the entire nationality partake of the blessing of
a highly bred racial stock.

The way to do this is above all for the state not to leave the
settlement of newly acquired territories to chance, but to subject
it to special norms. Specially constituted racial commissions
must issue settlement certificates to individuals. For this, how-
ever, definite racial purity must be established. It will thus
gradually become possible to found border colonies whose in-
habitants are exclusively bearers of the highest racial purity and
hence of the highest racial efficiency. This will make them a
precious national treasure to the entire nation; their growth must
fill every single national comrade with pride and confidence, for
in them lies the germ for a final, great future development of our
own people, nay — of humanity.

In the folkish state, finally, the folkish philosophy of life must
succeed in bringing about that nobler age in which men no longer are
concerned with breeding dogs, horses, and cats, but in elevating man
himself, an age in which tlK one knowingly and silently renounces,
the other joyfully sacrifices and gives.

That this is possible may not be denied in a world where hun-
dreds and hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily submit to
celibacy, obligated and bound by nothing except the inj’unction
of the Church.

Should the same renunciation not be possible if this injunction
is replaced by the admonition finally to put an end to the constant
and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give the
Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created?

Of course, the miserable army of our present-day shopkeepers

406

Mein Kampf

will never understand this. They will laugh at it or shrug their
crooked shoulders and moan forth their eternal excuse: ‘That
would be very nice in itself, but it can’t be done! ’ True, it can no
longer be done with you, your world isn’t fit for it! You know
but one concern: your personal life, and one God: your money!
But we are not addressing ourselves to you, we are appealing to
the great army of those who are so poor that their personal life
cannot mean the highest happiness in the world; to those who do
not see the ruling principle of their existence in gold, but in other
gods. Above aU we appeal to the mighty army of our German
youth. They are growing up at a great turning point and the
evils brought about by the inertia and indifference of their fa-
thers mU force them into struggle. Some day the German youth
will either be the builder of a new folkish state, or they will be the
last witness of total collapse, the end of the bourgeois world.

For if a generation suffers from faults which it recognizes, even
admits, but nevertheless, as occurs today in our bourgeois world,
contents itself with the cheap excuse that there is nothing to be
done about it — such a society is doomed. The characteristic
thing about our bourgeois world is precisely that it can no longer
deny the ailments as such. It must admit that much is rotten
and bad, but it no longer finds the determination to rebel against
the evil, to muster the force of a people of sixty or seventy mil-
lions with embittered energy, and oppose it to the danger. On
the contrary: if this is done elsewhere, silly comments are made
about it, and they attempt from a distance at least to prove the
theoretical impossibility of the method and declare success to be
inconceivable. And no reason is too absurd to serve as a prop for
their own dwarfishness and mental attitude. If, for example, a
whole continent finally declares war on alcoholic poisoning, in
order to redeem a people from the clutches of this devastating
vice, our European bourgeois world has no other comment for it
than a meaningless staring and head-shaking, a supercilious ridi-
cule — which is particularly suited to this most ridiculous of all
societies. But if all this is to no avail, and if somewhere in the
world the sublime, inviolable old routine is opposed, and even

Lack of Energy in the Bourgeoisie

407

with success, then, as said before, the success at least must be
doubted and deprecated; and here they do not even shun to raise
bourgeois-moral arguments against a struggle which strives to
abolish the greatest immorality.

No, we must none of us make any mistake about all of this:
our present bourgeoisie has become worthless for every exalted
task of mankind, simply because it is without quality and no
good; and what makes it no good is not so much in my opinion
any deliberate malice as an incredible indolence and everything
that springs from it. And therefore those political clubs which
carry on under the collective concept of ‘bourgeois parties’ have
long ceased to be anything else but associations representing the
interests of certain professional groups and classes, and their
highest task has ceased to be an5rthing but the best possible selfish
defense of their interests. It is obvious that such a political
‘bourgeois’ guild is good for an3^hing sooner than struggle; espe-
cially if the opposing side does not consist of cautious pepper
sacks [small tradesmen], but of proletarian masses, incited to ex-
tremes and determined to do their worst. •

* * *

If as the first task of the state in the service and for the welfare
of its nationality we recognize the preservation, care, and de-
velopment of the best racial elements, it is natural that this care
must not only extend to the birth of every little national and
racial comrade, but that it must educate the young offspring to
become a valuable link in the chain of future reproduction.

And as in general the precondition for spiritual achievement
lies in the racial quality of the human material at hand, education
in particular must first of all consider and promote phyacal
health; for taken in the mass, a healthy, forceful spirit will be
found only in a healthy and forceful body. The fact that geniuses
are sometimes physically not veiy fit, or actually sick, is no argu-
ment against this. Here we have to do with exceptions which —

408

Mein Kampf

as eveiywhere — only confirm the rule. But if the mass of a
people consists of physical degenerates, from this swamp a really
great spirit will very seldom arise. In any case his activity will
not meet with great success. The degenerate rabble will either
not understand him at all, or it will be so weakened in wiU that it
can no longer follow the lofty flight of such an eagle.

Realizing this, the folkish state must not adjust its entire educa-
tional work primarily to the inoculation of mere knowledge, but to
the breeding of absolutely healthy bodies. The training of mental
abilities is only secondary. And here again, first place must be
taken by the development of character, especially the promotion of
will-power and determination, combined with the training of joy in
responsibility, and only in last place comes scientific schooling.

Here the foUdsh state must proceed from the assumption thai
a man of little scientific education but physically healthy, with a good,
firm character, imbued with the joy of determination and will-power,
is more valuable for the national community than a clever weakling.
A people of scholars, if they are physically degenerate, weak-
willed and cowardly pacifists, will not storm the heavens, indeed
they will not even be able to safeguard their existence on this
earth. In the hard struggle of destiny the man who knows least
seldom succumbs, but always he who from his knowledge draws
the weakest consequences and is most lamentable in transforming
them into action. Here too, finally, a certain harmony must be
present. A decayed body is not made the least more aesthetic by a
brilliant mind, indeed the highest intellectual training could not
be justified if its bearers were at the same time physically de-
generate and crippled, weak-willed, wavering and cowardly in-
dividuals. Wliat makes the Greek ideal of beauty a model is the
wonderful combination of the most magnificent physical beauty
with brilliant mind and noblest soul.

If Moltke’s saying, ‘ In the long nm only the able man has luck,’
is anywhere applicable, it is surely to the relation between body
and mind; the mind, too, if it is healthy, wiU as a rule and in the
long run dwell only in the healthy body.

Ph)rsical training in the folkish state, therefore, is not an affair

Educational Principles op the Folkish State 409

of the individual, and not even a matter which primarily regards
the parents and only secondly or thirdly interests the community;
it is a requirement for the self-preservation of the nationality,
represented and protected by the state. Just as the state, as far
as purely scientific education is concerned, even today interferes
with the individual’s right of self-determination and upholds the
right of the totality toward him by subjecting the child to com-
pulsory education without asking whether the parents want it or
not — in far greater measure the folkish state must some day
enforce its authority against the individual’s ignorance or lack of
understanding in questions regarding the preservation of the
nationality. It must so organize its educational work that the
young bodies are treated expediently in their earliest childhood
and obtain the necessary steeling for later life. It must above all
prevent the rearing of a generation of hothouse plants.

This work of care and education must begin with the young
mother. Just as it became possible in the course of careful work
over a period of decades to achieve antiseptic cleanliness in child-
birth and reduce puerperal fever to a few cases, it must and will
be possible, by a thorough training of nurses and mothers them-
selves, to achieve a treatment of the child in his first years that
will serve as an excellent basis for future development.

The school as such in a folkish state must create infinitely more
free time for physical training. It is not permissible to burden
young brains with a ballast only a fraction of which they retain,
as experience shows, not to mention the fact that as a rule it is
unnecessary trifles that stick instead of essentials, since the young
child cannot imdertake a sensible sifting of the material that has
been funneled into him. If today, even in the curriculum of the
secondary schools, gymnastics gets barely two hours a week and
participation in it is not even obligatory, but is left open to the
individual, that is a gross incongruity compared to the purely
mental training. Not a day should go by in which the young
man does not receive one hour’s physical training in the morning
and one in the afternoon, covering every type of sport and gym-
nastics. And here one sport in particular must not be forgotten,

410

Mein Kampf

which in the eyes of many ‘folkish’ minded people is considered
vulgar and undignified: boxing. It is incredible what false opin-
ions are widespread in ‘educated’ circles. It is regarded as natural
and honorable that a young man should learn to fence and pro-
ceed to fight duels right and left, but if he boxes, it is supposed to
be vulgar! Why? There is no sport that so much as this one pro-
motes the spirit of attack, demands lightning decisions, and
tr ains the body in steel dexterity. It is no more vulgar for two
young men to fight out a difference of opinion with their fists than
with a piece of whetted iron. It is not less noble if a man who has
been attacked defends himself against his assailant with his fists,
instead of running away and yelling for a policeman. But above
all, the young, healthy body must also learn to suffer blows. Of
course this may seem wild to the eyes of our present spiritual
fighters. But it is not the function of the folkish state to breed a
colony of peaceful aesthetes and physical degenerates. Not in
the respectable shopkeeper or virtuous old maid does it see its
ideal of humanity, but in the defiant embodiment of manly
strength and in women who are able to bring men into the
world.

And so sport does not exist only to make the individual strong,
agile and bold; it should also toughen him and teach him to bear
hardships.

If our entire intellectual upper crust had not been brought up
so exclusively on upper-class etiquette; if instead they had learned
boxing thoroughly, a German revolution of pimps, deserters, and
such-like rabble would never have been possible ; for what gave
this revolution success was not the bold, courageous energy of the
revolutionaries, but the cowardly, wretched indecision of those
who led the state and were responsible for it. The fact is that our
whole intellectual leadership had received only ‘intellectual’
education and hence could not help but be defenseless the moment
not intellectual weapons but the crowbar went into action on
the opposing side. All this was possible only because as a matter
of principle especially our higher educational system did not
train men, but ofihcials, engineers, technicians, chemists, jurists.

Suggestive Force or Self-Confidence

411

journalists, and to keep these intellectuals from d 3 dng out,
professors.

Our intellectual leadership always performed brilliant feats,
whde our leadership in the matter of will-power usually remained
beneath all criticism.

Certainly it will not be possible to turn a man of basically
cowardly disposition into a courageous man by education, but
just as certainly a man who in himself is not cowardly will be
paralyzed in the development of his qualities if due to deficiencies
in his education he is from the very start inferior to his neighbor
in physical strength and dexterity. To what extent the conviction
of physical ability promotes a man’s sense of courage, even
arouses his spirit of attack, can best be judged by the example of
the army. Here, too, essentially, we have to deal not solely with
heroes but with the broad average. But the superior training of
the German soldier in peacetime inoculated the whole gigantic
organism with that suggestive faith in its own superiority to an
extent which even our foes had not considered possible. For the
imm ortal offensive spirit and offensive courage achieved in the
long months of midsummer and autumn 1914 by the forward-
sweeping German armies was the result of that untiring train-
ing which in the long, long years of peace obtained the most
incredible achievement often out of fraU bodies, and thus culti-
vated that self-confidence which was not lost even in the terror
of the greatest battles.

Particularly our German people •which today lies broken and de-
fenseless, exposed to the kicks of all the world, needs that suggestive
force that lies in self-confidence. This self-confidence must be in-
culcated in the young national comrade from childhood on. His
whole education and training must be so ordered as to give him the
conviction that he is absolutely superior to others. Through his
physical strength and dexterity, he must recover his faith in the in-
vincibility of his whole people. For what formerly led the German
army to victory was the sum of the confidence which each individual
had in himself and all together in their leadership. What •will raise
the German people up again is confidence in the possibility of regain-

412

Mein Kampf

ing its freedom. And iMs conviction can only be the final product of
the same feeling in millions of individuals.

Here, too, we must not deceive ourselves:

Immense was the collapse of our people, and the exertion
needed to end this misery some day will have to be just as im-
mense. Anyone who thinks that our present bourgeois education
for peace and order will give our people the strength some day
to smash the present world order, which means our doom, and to
hurl the links of our slavery into the face of our enemies, is bit-
terly mistaken. Only by super-abundance of national will-power,
thirst for freedom, and highest passion, will we compensate for
what we formerly lacked.^

* * *

The clothing of our youth should also be adapted to this pur-
pose. It is truly miserable to behold how our youth even, now is
subjected to a fashion madness which helps to reverse the sense
of the old saying: ‘Clothes make the man’ into something truly
catastrophic.

Especially in the youth, dress must be put into the service of
education. The boy who in sunnner runs around in long stove-
pipe trousers, and covered up to the neck, loses through his cloth-
ing alone a stimulus for his physical training. For we must ex-
ploit ambition and, we may as well calmly admit it, vanity as
well. Not vanity about fine clothes which everyone cannot buy,
but vanity about a beautiful, well-formed body which everyone
can help to build.

This is also expedient for later life. The girl should get to know
her beau. If physical beauty were today not forced entirely into
the background by our foppish fashions, the seduction of hun-
dreds of thousands of girls by bow-legged, repulsive Jewish bas-
tards would not be possible. Tins, too, is in the interest of the
nation: that the most beautiful bodies should find one another,
and so help to give the nation new beauty.

Supervision: School and Military Service 413

Today, of course, all this is more necessary than ever, because
there is no military training, and so the sole institution is excluded
which in peacetime compensated at least in part for what was
neglected by the rest of our educational system. And there, too,
success was to be sought, not only in the training of the individual
as such, but in the influence it exerted on the relations between
the two sexes. The young girl preferred the soldier to the non-
soldier.

The folkish state must not only carry through and supervise
physical training in the official school years; in the post-school
period as well it must make sure that, as long as a boy is in process
of physical development, this development turns out to his bene-
fit. It is an absurdity to believe that with the end of the school
period the state’s right to supervise its young citizens suddenly
ceases, but returns at the military age. This right is a duty and
as such is equally present at all times. Only the present-day state
having no interest in healthy people has neglected this duty in a
criminal fashion. It lets present-day youth go to the dogs on
the streets and in brothels, instead of taking them in hand and
continuing their physical education until the day when they grow
up into a healthy man and a healthy woman.

In what form the state .carries on this training is beside the
point today; the important thing is that it should do so and seek
the ways and means that serve this purpose. The folkish state
win have to look on post-school physical training as well as in-
tellectual education as a state function, and foster them through
state institutions. This education in its broad outlines can serve
as a preparation for future military service. The army will not
have to teach the young men the fundamentals of the most ele-
mentary drill-book as hitherto, and it wUl not get recruits of the
present type; no, it will only have to transform a young man who
has already received flawless physical preparation into a soldier.

In the folkish state, therefore, the army will no longer have to
teach the individual how to walk and to stand; it will be the last
and highest school of patriotic education. In the army the young
recruit will receive the necessary training in arms, and at the same

414

Mein Kampe

timP! he win receive a further moulding for any other future
career. But in the forefront of military training will stand what
has to be regarded as the highest merit of the old army: in this
school the boy must be transformed into a man; in this school he
must not only learn to obey, but must thereby acquire a basis for
commanding later. He must learn to be silent not only when he is
justly blamed but must also learn, when necessary, to bear in-
justice in silence.

Furthermore, reinforced by faith in his own strength, filled
with the force of a commonly experienced esprit de corps, he must
become convinced of the invincibility of his nationality.

After the conclusion of his military service, two documents
should be issued: His citizen’s diploma, a legal document which
admits him to public activity, and his health certificate, confirm-
ing his physical health for marriage.

* * *

Analogous to the education of the boy, the folkish state can
conduct the education of the girl from the same viewpoint. There,
too, the chief emphasis must be laid on physical training, and
only subsequently on the promotion of spiritual and finally in-
tellectual values. The goal of female education must invariably
be the futme mother.

* * *

Only secondarily must the folkish state promote the develop-
ment of the character in every way.

Assuredly the most essential features of character are fimda-
mentaUy preformed in the individual: the man of egotistic nature
is and remains so forever, just as the idealist in the bottom of his
heart will always be an idealist. But between the fully distinct
characters there are millions that seem vague and unclear. The

Training in Silence

41S

born criminal is and remains a criminal; but numerous people in
whom there is only a certain tendency toward the criminal can by
sound education still become valuable members of a national
community; while conversely, through bad education, wavering
characters can turn into really bad elements.

How often, during the War, did we hear the complaint that
our people were so little able to be silent\ How hard this made it
to withhold even important secrets from the knowledge of our
enemies! But ask yourself this question: What, before the War,
did German education do to teach the individual silence? Even
in school, sad to say, wasn’t the little informer sometimes pre-
ferred to his more silent schoolmates? Was not and is not in-
forming regarded as praiseworthy 'frankness,' discretion as
reprehensible obstinacy? Was any effort whatever made to repre-
sent discretion as a manly and precious virtue? No, for in the
eyes of our present school system these are trifles. But these
trifles cost the state countless millions in court costs, for ninety
per cent of all slander and similar suits have arisen only through
lack of discretion. Irresponsibly dropped remarks are gossiped
along just as frivolously, our national economy is constantly
harmed by the frivolous revelation of important manufacturing
processes, etc.; in fact, aU our secret preparations for national
defense are rendered illusory since the people simply have not
learned how to be silent but pass everything on. This talkative-
ness can lead to the loss of battles and thus contribute materially
to the unfavorable issue of the conflict. Here, again, we must
realize that mature age cannot do what has not been practiced
in youth. And this is the place to say that a teacher, for instance,
must on principle not try to obtain knowledge of silly children’s
tricks by cultivating loathsome tattle-tales. Youth has its own
state, it has a certain closed solidarity toward the grown-up, and
this is perfectly natural. The ten year-old’s bond with his play-
mate of the same age is more natural and greater than his bond
with grown-ups. A boy who snitches on his comrade practices
treason and thus betrays a mentality which, harshly expressed
and enlarged, is the exact equivalent of treason to one’s country.

416

Mein Kampf

Such a boy can by no means be regarded as a ‘good, decent' child;
no, he is a boy of undesirable character. The teacher may find it
convenient to make use of such vices for enhancing his authority,
but in this way he sows in the youthful heart the germ of a men-
tality the later effect of which may be catastrophic. More than
once, a little informer has grown up to be a big scoundrel!

This is only one example among many. Today the conscious
development of good, noble traits of character in school is practi-
cally nil. In the future far greater emphasis must be laid on this.
Loyalty, spirit of sacrifice, discretion are virtues that a great nation
absolutely needs, and their cultivation and development in school
are more important than some of the things which today fill out
our curriculums. The discouragement of whining complaints, of
bawling, etc., also belongs in this province. If a system of educa-
tion forgets to teach the child in early years that sufferings and
adversity must be borne in silence, it has no right to be surprised
if later at a critical hour, when a man stands at the front, for e.x-
ample, the entire postal service is used for nothing but transport-
ing whining letters of mutual complaint. If at the public schools
a little less knowledge had been fimneled into our youth and more
self-control, this would have been richly rewarded in the years
from 1915 to 1918.

And so the folkish state, in its educational work, must side
by side with physical culture set the highest value precisely on
the training of character. Numerous moral weaknesses in our
present national body, if they cannot be entirely eliminated by
this kind of education, can at least be very much attenuated.

* * *

Of the highest importance is the training of will-power and deter-
mination, plus the cultivation of joy in responsibility.

In the army the principle once held good that any command is
better than none; related to youth this means primarily that any
answer is better than none. The dread of giving no answer for

Cultivation of Joy and Responsibility

417

fear of saying something wrong must be considered more hu-
miliating than an incorrectly given answer. Starting from this
most primitive basis, youth should be trained in such a way that
it acquires courage for action.

People have often complained that in the days of November
and December, 1918, every single authority failed, that from the
monarchs down to the last divisional commander, no one was
able to summon up the strength for an independent decision.
This terrible fact is the handwriting on the wall for our edu-
cational system, for this cruel catastrophe expressed, hugely
magnified, what was generally present on a small scale. It is this
lack of will and not the lack of weapons which today makes us
incapable of any serious resistance. It sits rooted in our whole
people, prevents any decision with which a risk is connected, as
though the greatness of a deed did not consist precisely in the
risk. Without suspecting it, a German general succeeded in find-
ing the classic formula for this miserable spinelessness: ‘I act only
if I can count on fifty-one per cent likelihood of success.’ In these
‘fifty-one per cent’ lies the tragedy of the German coUapse; any-
one who demands of Fate a guaranty of success, automatically
renounces all idea of a heroic deed. For this lies in undertaking a
step which may lead to success, in the fuU awareness of the mortal
danger inherent in a state of affairs. A cancer victim whose
death is otherwise certain does not have to figure out fifty-one
per cent in order to risk an operation. And if the operation
promises only half a per cent likelihood of cure, a courageous
man will risk it; otherwise he has no right to whimper for his
life.

The plague of our present-day cowardly lack of will and de-
termination is, all in all, mainly the result of our basically faulty
education of youth, whose devastating effect extends to later life
and finds its ultimate crowning conclusion in the lack of civil
courage in our leading statesmen.

In the same line falls the present-day flagrant cowardice in the
face of responsibility. Here, too, the error begins in the education
of youth, goes on to permeate all public life, and finds its im-

418

Mein Kamfp

mortal completion in the parliamentary institution of govern-
ment.

Even at school, unfortunately, more value is attached to ‘re-
pentant’ confession and ‘contrite abjuration’ on the part of
the little sinner than to a frank admission. The latter seems to
many popular educators of today the surest mark of an incor-
rigible depravity and, incredible as it may seem, the gallows is
predicted for many a youth for qualities which would be of in-
estimable value if they constituted the common possession of a
whole people.

Jiist as ihefolkish state must some day devote the highest attention
to the training of the will and force of decision, it must from an early
age implant joy in responsibility and courage for confession in the
hearts of youth. Only if it recognizes this necessity in its full im-
port will it finally, after an educational work enduring for cen-
turies, obtain as a result a national body which will no longer
succumb to those weaknesses which today have contributed so
catastrophically to our decline.

* * *

The scientific school training which today is really the begin-
ning and end of all state educational work can with only slight
changes be taken over by the folkish state. These changes lie in
three fields.

In the first place the youthful brain should in general not be
burdened with things ninety-five per cent of which it cannot use and
hence forgets again. Particularly, the curriculum of the elementary
and intermediate schools is today a mongrel; in many cases, the
material to be learned in the various subj’ects is so swollen that
only a fraction of it remains in the head of the individual pupil,
and only a fraction of this abimdance can find application, while
on the other hand it is not adequate for the man working and
earning his living in a definite field. Take, for example, the
average government official, graduated from the Gymnasium or

No Overloading of the Brain

419

the superior Realschule, at the age of thirty-five or forty, and
examine him in the school learning that was once so painfully
drummed into him. How little of all the stuff that was once
funneled into him is still present! To be sure, you wiU get the
answer: ‘Well, the mass of material learned then was not in-
tended only for the future possession of varied knowledge, but
also for training mental receptivity, the power of thought and
especially the memory. This is partly correct. Yet there is a
danger in having the youthful brain flooded with so many im-
pressions which only in the rarest cases it is able to master, and
whose various elements it neither can sift nor evaluate accord-
ing to their greater or lesser importance; and besides, as a rule,
not the non-essential but the essential is forgotten and sacrificed.
Thus the main purpose of learning so much is again lost; for it
cannot consist after aU in inducing learning power in the brain
by an unmeasured heaping up of material, but must be to give
the future man that store of knowledge which the individual
needs and which through him in turn benefits the community.
And this becomes illusory if the man, in consequence of the
superabundance of the material forced on him in youth, later
either possesses it not at all or has long since lost the very essen-
tials. It is impossible to understand, for example, why millions
of people in the course of the years must learn two or three
foreign languages only a fraction of which they can make use of
later and hence most of them forget entirely, for of a hundred
thousand pupils who learn French for example, barely two thou-
sand win have a serious use for this knowledge later, while
ninety-eight thousand in the whole further course of their life
win not find themselves in a position to make practical use of
what they had once learned. They have in their youth, there-'
fore, devoted thousands of hours to a subject which later is_
without value and meaning for them. And the objection that
this material belongs to general education, is unsound, since it
could only be upheld if people retained aff through their life what
they had learned. So in reality, because of the two thousand peo-
ple for whom the knowledge of this language is profitable, ninety-

420

MeIK KAUf f

eight thovisand must be tomeated for nothing and made to
sacrifice ^’aluable lime.

ia this case we are dealing with a language of which it can-
not even be said that it implies a training in sharp, logical think-
ing as applies, for example, to Latin. Hence it would be con-
siderably more expedient if such a language were transmitted to
the young student only in its general outlines or, better expressed,
in its inner structure, thus giving him knowledge of the most
salient e^nce of this language, introducing him perhaps to the
fundamentals of its grammar and pronunciation, discussing
syntax, etc., by model examples. This would suffice for general
use and. because it is easier to vis ualiz e and remember, would be
more valuable than the present-day manner of drumming in the
whole language, which is not really mastered anyway and is later
forgotten. In this way, moreover, the danger would be avoided
that of all the overpowering abundance of material only a few
unconnected crumbs would stick in the memory, as the young
man would have to learn the most noteworthy aspects, and con-
sequently the process of sifting according to value or the lack of it
would have taken place in advance.

The general foundation thus imparted would suffice most
people, even for later life, while it creates for those others who
really need the language later the possibility of building further
on it, and devoting themselves of their own free choice to learning
it with the greatest thoroughness.

Thus the necessary time in the curriculum is gained for physical
training as well as the increased demands in the abovementioned
fields.

Particularly in the present method of teaching history a change
must be made. Probably no p)eople studies more history than the
German; but probably there is no people that applies it worse
than ours. If politics is history in the making, our historical
education is directed by the natmre of our political activity.
Here, again, it is not peimissible to complain about the wretched
results of our political achievements unless we are determined to
Ij. provide a better political education. The result of oiur present

General and Specialized Education

421

history instruction is wretched in ninety-nine cases out of a hun-
dred. A few facts, dates, birthdays and names remain behind
while a broad, clear line is totally lacking. The essentials which
should really matter are not taught at all; it is left to the more or
less gifted nature of the individual to find out the inner motives
from the flood of dates and the sequence of events. We may argue
as much as we like against this bitter statement; just read at-
tentively the speeches on political problems, say questions of
foreign policy, delivered during a single session by our parlia-
mentary gentlemen; and bear in mind that these men — al-
legedly at least — are the cream of the German nation, and that
at any rate a large part of them have even been at universities,
and from this you will be able to see how totally inadequate the
historical education of these people is. If they had not studied
history at aU, but only possessed a healthy instinct, it would be
considerably better and more profitable for the nation.

Especially in historical instruction an abridgment of the
material must be undertaken. The main value lies in recognizing
the great lines of development. The more the instruction is
limited to this, the more it is to be hoped that an advantage will
later accrue to the individual from his knowledge, which summed
up wfll also benefit the community. For we do not learn history
just in order to know the past, we learn history in order to find
an instructor for the future and for the continued existence of our
own nationality. That is the end, and historical instruction is only
a means to it. But today the means has become the end, and the
end disappears completely. Let it not be said that thorough
study of history requires attention to all these individual details,
on the ground that only from them can a great line be developed.
To lay down this line is the fimction of the special science. The
normal, average man is no history professor. For him history
exists primarily to give him that measure of historical insight
which is necessary for him to take a position of his own on the
political issues of his nation. Anyone who wants to become a
history professor may later devote himself intensively to this
study. It goes without saying that he wfll have to concern him-

422

Mein Kampe

self with all and even the smallest details. For this, however,
even our present history instruction cannot suffice; for it is too
extensive for the normal, average man, but much too limited for
the specialized scholar.

Aside from this, it is the task of the folkish state to see to it
that a world history is finally written in which the racial question
is raised to a dominant position.

( To sum up : the folkish state will have to put general, scientific
'[ instruction into an abbreviated form, embracing the essentials.
In addition to this, the possibihty of a thorough, specialized train-
ing must be offered. It suffices for the individual man to obtain a
general knowledge in broad outlines as a foundation, and only in
the field which wUl be that of his later life, to enjoy the most
thorough specialized and detailed training. General education
should be obligatory in aU departments; the special training
should remain free to the choice of the individual.

The shortening of the curriculum and the number of hours
thus achieved will benefit the training of the body, of the char-
acter, of the will power and determination.

How irrevelant our present-day school training, especially in
the high schools, is for a future profession is best demonstrated
by the fact that today people from three schools of an entirely
different nature can arrive at one and the same position. In re-
ality only the gener^ll education is of decisive importance and not
the specialized knowledge that is funneled into them. And where
— as I have said before — a specialized knowledge is really nec-
essary it can naturally not be obtained within the curriculums of
our present high schools.

With such halfway methods, therefore, the f olkish state must
some day do away.

The second change of scientific curriculum in the folkish state
must be the following;

Valuk op Humanistic Education

423

It is the characteristic of our present materialized epoch that
our scientific education is turning more and more toward practical
subjects — in other words, mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc.
Necessary as this is for a period in which technology and chem-
istry rule — embodying at least those of its characteristics which
are most visible in daily life — it is equally dangerous when the
general education of a nation is more and more exclusively di-
rected toward them. This education on the contrary must always
be ideal. It must be more in keeping with the humanistic sub-
jects and offer only the foundations for a subsequent additional
education in a special field. Otherwise we renounce the forces
which are still more important for the preservation of the nation
than all technical or other ability. Especially in historical in-
struction we must not be deterred from the study of antiquity.
Roman history correctly conceived in extremely broad outlines
is and remains the best mentor, not only for today, but probably
for all time. The Hellenic ideal of culture should also remain
preserved for us in its exemplary beauty. We must not allow the
greater racial community to be tom asunder by the differences of
the individual peoples. The struggle that rages today is for very
great aims. A culture combining millenniums and embracing
Hellenism and Germanism is fighting for its existence.

A sharp difference should exist between general education and
specialized knowledge. As particularly today the latter threatens
more and more to sink into the service of pure Mammon, general
education, at least in its more ideal attitude, must be retained as
a counterweight. Here, too, we must incessantly inculcate the
principle that industry, techrwlogy, and commerce can thrive only as
long as an idealistic national community offers the necessary pre-
conditions. And these do not lie in material egoism, but in a spirit
of sacrifice and joyful renunciation.

* * *

By and large the present education of youth has set itself the
primary goal of pumping into the young person that knowledge

424

Mein Kampf

which in his later career he needs for his own advancement. This
is expressed in the words : ‘ The young man must some day become
a useful member of society.’ By this is meant his ability some day
to earn his daily bread in a decent way. The superficial civic
training carried on alongside rests on a weak base to begin with.
Since the state in itself represents only a form, it is very hard to
educate, let alone obligate people with regard to it. A form can
too easily be shattered. But the concept ‘state’ — as we have
seen — does not possess a clear content today. And so there
remains nothing but the current ‘patriotic’ education./ In old
Germany its chief emphasis lay in a deification, often unintelli-
gent and usually very insipid, of the small and smallest poten-
tates, whose very quantity from the outset made it necessary to
renounce any comprehensive appreciation of our nation’s really
great men. The result among our broad masses, consequently,
was a very inadequate knowledge of German history. Here,
too, the great line was lacking.,;.

That a real national enthusiasm could not be achieved in this
fashion is obvious. Our educational system lacked the art of
picking a few names out of the historical development of our
people and making them the common property of the whole
German people, thus through like knowledge and like enthusiasm
tying a uniform, imiting bond around the entire nation. They did
not understand how to make the really significant men of our
people appear as outstanding heroes in the eyes of the present, to
concentrate the general attention upon them and thus create a
unified mood. They were not able to raise what was glorious for
the nation in the various subjects of instruction above the level of
objective presentation, and fire the national pride by such gleam-
ing examples. This would have seemed reprehensible chauvinism
to that period, and in this form would not have met with much
approval. Comfortable dynastic patriotism seemed more agree-
able and easier to bear than the clamoring passion of higher na-
tional pride. The former was always ready to serve, the latter
might some day become a master. Monarchistic patriotism
ended in veterans’ clubs, the national passion would have been

Prevailing ‘Patriotic’ Education

425

hard to direct in its course. It is like a thoroughbred horse which
does not carry everyone in the saddle. Is it any wonder that the
powers of the time preferred to keep aloof from such a danger?
No one seemed to consider it possible that some day there might
come a war that would thoroughly test the inner steadfastness
of our patriotic convictions in drumfire and clouds of gas. But
when it came, the absence of the highest national passion brought
the most frightful consequences. People had but little desire to
die for their imperial and royal lords, and the ‘nation’ was un-
known to most of them.

Since the revolution made its entry into Germany and mon-
archistic patriotism died out of its own accord, the purpose of
instruction in history is really nothing more than the mere ac-
quisition of knowledge. This state cannot use national enthusi-
asm ; but what it would like to have it will never get. For no more
than there could be a dynastic patriotism endowed with the ulti-
mate power of resistance in an age governed by the principle of
nationalities, much less can there be a republican enthusiasm.
For there can be no doubt that under the motto, ‘For the Re-
public,’ the German people would not remain in the battlefield
for any four and oue-half years; least of aU did those remain who
have created this amazing structure.

Actually this Republic owes its unshorn existence only to its willing-
ness, of which it gives assurance on all sides, voluntarily to assume
all tribute payments and sign every renunciation of territory. It is
liked by the rest of the world; just as every weakling is considered
more agreeable by those who need him than a rough man. True,
this sympathy on the part of enemies is the most annihilating criti-
cism for precisely this state form. Our enemies love the German
Republic and let it live because they could not find a better ally
for their enslavement of our people. To this fact alone does this
magnifi cent structure owe its present existence. That is why it
can renounce any truly national education and content itself with
cries of ‘Eoch’ from Reichsbanner^ heroes who, incidentally, if

^ Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rol-Gold. Semi-military republican organization
founded on February 22, 1924, by the Social Democrats Otto Horsing and
Holterman. In 1932, it had three and a half million members.

426

Mein Kampf

they bad to protect this banner with their blood, would run away
like rabbits.

The foikish state ■mil have to fight for its existence. It -will
neither obtain it by Dawes signatures, nor be able to defend its
existence by them. For its existence and for its protection, it ■will
need the very thin gs that people today think they can do 'without
The more incomparable and precious its form and content will be,
the greater ■will be the en'vy and resistance of its enemies. Its best
defense ■will lie not in its weapons, but in its citizens; no fortress
T,'alls protect it, but a li'ving wall of men and women filled
■with supreme love of their fatherland and fanatical national
enthusiasm.

The third point to be considered in scientific education is the
follo’wing:

Science, loo, must he regarded by thefolkisk state as an instrument
for the advancement of national pride. Not only world history but
all cultural history must be taught from this standpoint. An in'-
lentor must not only seem great as an inventor, but must seem erven
greater as a national comrade. Our admiration of ervery great deed
must be bathed in pride that its fortunate performer is a member of
our own people. From all ike innumerable great names of German
history, the greatest must be picked out and introduced to the youth so
persistently that they become pillars of an unshakable tiational
sentiment.

The curriculum must be systematically built up along these
lines so that when the young man leaves his school he is not a half
pacifist, democrat, or something else, but a whole German.

In order that this national sentiment should be genuine from
the outset and not consist in mere hollow pretense, beginning in
youth one iron principle must be hanunered into those heads
which are still capable of education: any man vjho loves his people
proves it solely by the sacrifices which he is prepared to make for it.
There is no such thing as national sentiment which is only out for
gain. No more is there any nationalism which only embraces classes.
Shouting hurrah proves nothing and gives no right to call oneself
national if behind it there does not stand a great, lovina concern for

Awakening of National Pride

427

the preservation of a universal healthy nation. There is ground for
pride in our people only if we no longer need be ashamed of any class.
But a people, half of which is wretched and careworn, or even de-
praved, offers so sorry a picture that no one should feel any pride in
it. Only when a nation is healthy in all its members, in body and
soul, can every man’s joy in belonging to it rightfully be magnified to
that high sentiment which we designate as national pride. And this
highest pride will only befell by the man who knows the greatness of
his nation.

An intimate coupling of nationalism and a sense of social justice
must be implanted in the young heart. Then a people of citizens will
some day arise, bound to one another and forged together by a common
love and a common pride, unshakable and invincible forever.

Our era’s fear of chauvinism is the sign of its impotence. Not only
lacking any exuberant force, but even finding it distasteful, it is no
longer destined by Fate for a great deed. For the greatest revolutionary
changes on this earth would not have been thinkable if their motive
force, instead of fanatical, yes, hysterical passion, had been merely
the bourgeois virtues of law and order.

And assuredly this world is moving toward a great revolution. The
question can only be whether it will redound to the benefit of Aryan
humanity or to the profit of the eternal Jew.

Thefolkish state will have to make certain that by a suitable educa-
tion of youth it will some day obtain a race ripe for the last and
greatest decisions on this earth.

And the people which first sets out on this path will be victorious.

* # *

The crown of the folkish state’s entire work of education and
training must be to burn the racial sense and racial feeling into the
instinct and the intellect, the heart and brain of the youth entrusted to
it. No boy and no girl must leave school without having been led to
an ultimate realization of the necessity and essence of blood purity.
Thus the groundwork is created by preserving the racial founda-

428

Mein Kaupf

tions of our nation and through them in turn securing the basis
for its future cultural development.

For aU physical and aU intellectual training would in the last
analysis remain worthless if it did not benefit a being which is
ready and determined on principle to preserve himself and his
special nature.

Otherwise that would occur which we Germans even now must
greatly deplore, though perhaps the full extent of this tragic mis-
fortune has hitherto not been realized: that in the future we remain
nothing but cultural fertilizer, not only in the limited conception of
our present bourgeois view, which regards an individual national
comrade lost as nothing more than a lost citizen, but with the painful
realization that in this event, despite all our knowledge and ahility,
our blood is nevertheless doomed to decline. By mating again and
again with other races, we may raise these races from their previous
cultural level to a higher stage, but we will descend forever from our
own high level.

For the rest this education, too, from the racial viewpoint, must
find its ultimate completion in military service. And in general, the
period of military service must be regarded as the conclusion of the
average German’s normal education.

* * *

Important as the type of physical and mental education will be
in thefolkish stale, equally important will be the human selection as
such. Today this matter is taken lightly. In general it is the
children of high-placed, at the time weU-situated parents who are
considered worthy of a lugher education. Questions of talent
play a subordinate r61e. Taken in itself, talent can only be evalu-
ated relatively. A peasant boy can possess far more talents than
the child of parents enjoying an elevated position in life for many
generations, even if he is inferior to the bourgeois child in general
knowledge. The latter’s greater knowledge has in itself nothing
to do with greater or lesser talent, but is rooted in the materially

State Selection of the Fit

429

greater abundance of impressions which the child continuously
receives as a result of his more varied education and rich environ-
ment. If the talented peasant boy from his early years had like-
wise grown up in such an environment, his intellectual ability
would be quite different. Today, perhaps, there is a single field
in which origin is really less decisive than the individual’s native
talent: the field of art. Here where a man cannot merely Team,’
but everything has to be originally innate and is only later sub-
ject to a more or less favorable development in the sense of wise
encouragement of existing gifts, the money and wealth of the
parents are almost irrelevant. Hence it is here best shown that
talent is not bound up with the higher walks of life, let alone with
wealth. The greatest artists arise not seldom from the poorest
houses. And many a poor village boy has later become a cele-
brated master.

It does not exactly argue great depth of thought in our time
that this realization is not applied to our whole spiritual life.
People imagine that what cannot be denied in art does not apply
to the so-called exact sciences. Without doubt certain mechanical
abilities can be taught a man, just as clever training can teach a
docile poodle the most amazing tricks. But in animal training,
the intelligence of the animal does not of itself lead to such ex-
ercises, and the same is the case with man. Without regard for
any other talent, man too can be taught certain scientific tricks,
but the process is just as lifeless and inwardly uninspired as with
the anima.1. On the basis of a certain intellectual drill, knowledge
above the average can be crammed into an average man; but it
remains dead, and in the last analysis sterile knowledge. The
result is a man who may be a living dictionary but nevertheless
falls down miserably in all special situations and decisive mo-
ments in life; he will always have to be coached again for every
situation, even the simplest, and by his own resources will not be
able to TTiakP! the slightest contribution to the development of
h umani ty. Such a mechanically drilled knowledge suffices at
most for assuming state positions in our present period.

It goes without saying that in the totality of a nation’s popular

430

Mein Kampf

tion talents will be found for ewiy possible domain of daily life.
It is furthermore obvious that the value of knowledge will be the
greater, the more the dead knowledge is a n i m ated by the relevant
talent in the individual. Creathe achievemenls can only arise when
ability and knowledge are wedded.

The boundless sins of present-day humanity in this direction
may be shown by one more example. From time to time il-
lustrated papers bring it to the attention of the German petty-
bourgeois that some place or other a Negro has for the first time
become a lawyer, teacher, even a pastor, in fact a heroic tenor, or
something of the sort. While the idiotic bourgeoisie looks with
amazement at such miracles of education, full of respect for this
marvelous result of modern educational skill, the Jew shrewdly
draws from it a new proof for the soundness of his theory about
the equality of men that he is trying to funnel into the minds of
the nations. It doesn’t dawn on this depraved bourgeois world
that this is positively a sin against aU reason; that it is criminal
lunacy to keep on drilling a bom half-ape until people think they
have made a lawyer out of him, while milli ons of members of the
highest culture-race must remain in entirely unworthy positions;
that it is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator if His most
gifted beings by the hundreds and himdreds of thousands are
allowed to degenerate in the present proletarian morass, while
Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained for intellectual profes-
aons. For this is training exactly like that of the poodle, and not
scientific ‘education.’ The same pains and care employed on in-
telligent races would a thousand times sooner make every single
individual capable of the same achievements.

But intolerable as this state of affairs would be if it ever con-
sisted of an5rthmg but exceptions, equally intolerable is it today in
places where it is not talent £ind inborn gifts that decide who is
chosen for higher education. Yes, indeed, it is an intolerable
thought that every year hundreds of thousands of completely
ungifted people are held worthy of a higher education, while
other hundreds of thousands with great talent r emain deprived
of higher education. The loss which the nation thereby suffers is

State Selection of the Fit

431

inestimable. If in the last decades the wealth of important in-
ventions has increased amazingly, especially in North America, it
is not least because there materially more talents from the lowest
classes find opportunity for higher education than is the case in
Europe.

For invention, drilled knowledge does not suffice, but only
knowledge animated by talent. But in our country today no
store is set on this; it is only good marks that matter.

Here, too, the foUdsh state will some day have to intervene by
education. Its task is not to preserve the decisive influence of an
existing social class, but to pick the most capable kinds from the sum
of all the national comrades and bring them to office and dignity. It
has not only the obligation of giving the average child a certain
education in public school, but also the duty of putting talent on
the track where it belongs. Above aU, it must see its highest task
in opening the gates of the higher state educational institutions
to all talent, absolutely regardless from what circles it may origi-
nate. It must fulfill this task, since only in this way can repre-
sentatives of a dead knowledge be transformed into brilliant
leaders of a nation.

And for another reason the state must take measures in this
direction: our intellectual classes, especially in Germany, are so
segregated and so ossified that they lack a living connection with
the people below them. We suffer from this in two ways; in the
first place, they lack as a consequence any understanding and
feeling for the broad masses. They have been tom out of this
relation too long to possess the necessary psychological under-
standing for the people. They have become alien to the people.
And in the second place, these intellectual strata lack the neces-
sary will-power, which is always weaker in this secluded intel-
lectual caste than in the mass of the primitive people. We Ger-
mans, by God, have never lacked scientific education; but we
have been all the more lacking in any will power and determina-
tion. The more ‘intellectual’ our statesmen were, for example,
the feebler, as a rule, was their actual accomplishment. The
political preparations, as well as the technical armament for the

432

Mein Kampf

World War, was not inadequate because insufficiently educated
minds ruled our people, but because the rulers were overeducakd
men, crammed full of knowledge and intellect, but bereft of any
healthy instinct and devoid of all energy and boldness. It was a
calamity that our people had to conduct its struggle for existence
under the Chancellorship of a philosophizing weakling. If, instead
of a Bethmann-HoUweg, we had had a robuster man of the people
as a leader, the heroic blood of the common grenadier would not
have flowed in vain. Likewise, the excessively rarefied pure intel-
lect of our leader material was the best ally of the revolutionist
November scoundrels. By disgracefully withholding the na-
tional treasure that had been entrusted to them, instead of staking
it fully and wholly, these intellectuals themselves created the
premise for the enemy’s success.

In this the Catholic Church can be regarded as a model ex-
ample. The celibacy of its priests is a force compelling it to draw
the future generation again and again from the masses of the
broad people instead of from their own ranks. But it is this very
significance of celibacy that is not at all recognized by most
people. It is the cause of the incredibly vigorous strength which
resides in this age-old institution. For through the fact that this
gigantic army of spiritual dignitaries is continuously comple-
mented from the lowest strata of the nations, the Church not only
obtains its instinctive bond wfith the emotional world of the peo-
ple, but also assures itself a sura of energy and active force which
in such a form will forever exist only in the broad masses of the
people. From this arises the amazing youthfulness of this gi-
gantic organism, its spiritual suppleness and iron will-power.

It will be the task of a folkish stale to make certain through its
educational system that a continuous renewal of the existing intel-
lectual classes through an influx of fresh blood from below takes
place. The state has the obligation to exercise extreme care and
precision in picking from the total number of national comrades
tne human material visibly most gifted by Nature and to use it
in the service of the community. For state and statesmen do not
exist in order to provide individual classes with a living but to

Evaluation of Work

433

fulfill the tasks allotted to them. This will only be possible if as
a matter of principle only capable and strong-willed personalities
are trained to deal with these tasks. This applies not only to all
official positions but to the intellectual leadership of the nation
in all fields. Another factor for the greatness of the people is that
it succeed in training the most capable minds for the field suited
to them and placing them in the service of the national com-
munity. If two peoples, equally well endowed, compete with one
another, that one will achieoe victory which has represented in its
total intellectual leadership its best talents and that one will succumb
whose leadership represents only a big common feeding crib for
certain groups or classes, without regard to the innate abilities of the
various members.

To be sure, this looks impossible at first sight in our present
world. The objection will at once be raised that the little son of
a higher government official, for example, cannot be expected,
let us say, to become an artisan because someone else whose
parents were artisans seems more capable. This may be true in
view of the present estimation of manual labor. For this reason
the folkish state will have to arrive at a basically different attitude
toward the concept of labor. It will, if necessary, even by education
extending over centuries, have to break with the mischief of despising
physical activity. On principle it will have to evaluate the individual
man not according to the type of work he does but according to the
form and quality of his achievement. This may appear positively
monstrous to an era in which the most brainless columnist, just
because he works with the pen, seems superior to the most intel-
ligent precision mechanic. This false estimation, as has been said,
does not lie in the nature of things, but is artificially cultivated
and formerly did not exist. The present unnatural condition is
based on the generally diseased condition of our present material-
ized q)och.

Fundamentally, the value of aU work is twofold: a purely mor-
terial value and an ideal value. The material value resides in tl^e
importance, that is to say, the material importance of a piece of
work for the life of the totality. The more national comrades

434

Mein Kampf

draw profit from a certain achievement performed, including
direct and indirect profit, the greater the material value is to be
estimated. This estimation, in turn, finds its plastic expression
in the material reward which the individual obtains from his
work. Contrasting with this pmely material value, we now have
the ideal value. It does not rest in the importance of the work
performed measured materially, but in its necessity in itself.
As surely as the material profit of an invention can be greater
than that of an everyday handy-man’s service, just as surely does
the totality need the small service just as much as the great one.
It may make a material distinction in evaluating the benefit of the
individual piece of work for the totality, and can express this by a
corresponding reward; in an ideal sense, however, it must recog-
nize the equality of all as long as every individual endeavors to
do his best in his field — whatever it may be. It is on this that
the estimation of a man must be based, and not on his reward.

Since the concern of a sensible state must be to allot to the in-
dividual the activity which is in keeping with his ability or, other-
wise expressed, to train the capable minds for the work that is
suited to them, but since ability and principle are not taught but
must be inborn, hence are a gift of Nature and not an achieve-
ment of man, general civic estimation cannot depend on the
work that has, so to speak, been allotted to the individual. For
this work falls to the account of his birth and to the Jraining
which he has consequently received through the community.
The evaluation of the man must be based on the manner in which
he fulfills the task entrusted him by the co mmuni ty. For the
activity which the individual performs is not the end of his exist-
ence, but only the means to it. It is more important for him to
develop and ennoble himself as a man, but he can do this only
within the framework of his cultural commimity which must al-
ways rest on the fundament of a state. He must make his con-
tribution to the preservation of this fundament. The form of this
contribution is determined by Nature; his duty is only to return
to the national community with honest industry what it has
given him. Anyone who does this deserves the highest estimation

435

Evaluation or Work

and the highist respect. Material reward may be granted to him
whose achievement brings corresponding benefit to the community;
his ideal rewa^, however, must lie in the esteem which everyone can
claim who deduates to the service of his nationality the forces which
Nature gave l^m and which the national community has trained.
Then it is no longer a disgrace to be an honest manual worker,
but it is a dis^ace to be an incompetent official, stealing the day-
light from hislmaker and daily bread from honest people. Then
it will be takm for granted that a man will not be allotted tasks
to which he ia not equal to begin with.

Moreover, such activity provides the sole standard for right
in universal, equal, juridical civic activity.^

The present era is liquidating itself: it introduces universal
suffrage, shoots off its mouth about equal rights, but finds no
basis for them. It sees in material reward the expression of a
man’s worth and thereby shatters the foundation for the noblest
equality that there can be. For equality does not rest and never
can rest on the achievements of individuals in themselves, but it
is possible in the form in which everyone fulfills his special obliga-
tions. Thereby alone is the accident of Nature excluded in the
Judgment of the man’s worth, and the individual himself becomes
the smith of his own importance.

In the present period, when entire human groups can estimate
one adbther only according to salary classes, there is — as said
before — no understanding for this. But for us this cannot be a
reason to renounce the fight for our ideas. On the contrary:
anyone who wants to cure this era, which is inwardly sick and rotten,
must first of all summon up the courage to make clear the causes of
this disease. Atid this should be the concern of the National Socialist
movement: pushing aside all philistinism, to gather and to organize
from the ranks of our nation those forces capable of becoming the van-
guard fighters for a new philosophy of life.

* * *

' ‘Den einzigen Maszstdb fur das Recht bei der allgemeinen burgerlicken
BetiUigung.’

436

Mein Kampf

Of course, the objection will be made that in general the ideal
estimation is hard to separate from the material, indeed, that the
Himiniahing estimation of physical labor is brought about pre-
cisely by its diminished reward. And that this diminished reward
is in turn the cause for the limitation of the individual man’s
participation in the cultiural treasures of his nation. And that
precisely the ideal culture of man, which does not necessarily
have anything to do with his activity as such, is impaired thereby.
That the dread of physical labor is really based on the fact that,
as a result of the inferior reward, the cultural level of the manual
worker is necessarily lowered and that this provides the justifica-
tion for a general diminished estimation.

In this there lies much truth. For this very reason we must in
future guard ourselves against an excessive differentiation of
wage rates. Let it not be said that this would destroy achieve-
ment. It would be the saddest sign of the decay of a period if the
impetus to a higher spiritual achievement lay only in the in-
creased wage. If this criterion had been the sole determinant in
the world up to now, humanity would never have received its
greatest scientific and cultural treasures. For the greatest in-
ventions, the greatest discoveries, the most revolutionary scien-
tific work, the most magnificent monuments of human culture,
have not been given to the world through the urge for money.
On the contrary, their birth not seldom meant positive renuncia-
tion of the earthly happiness of riches.

It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of
life, but the time will come when man will again bow down before
a higher god. Many things today may owe their existence solely
to the longing for money and wealth, but there is very little
among them whose non-existence would leave humanity any the
poorer.

This, too, is a task of our movement; even now it must herald
a day which will give to the individual what he needs for living,
but uphold the principle that man does not live exclusively for
the sake of material pleasures. This must some day find its ex-
pression in a^wisely limited gradation of earnings which in any

Ideal and Reality

437

event will give every decent working man an honest, regular
existence as a national comrade and a man.

Let it not be said that this is an ideal condition which this
world wiU not tolerate in practice and will actually never achieve.

We are ml simple enough, either, to believe that it could ever be
possible to bring about a perfect era. But this relieves m one of the
obligation to combat recognized errors, to overcome weaknesses, and
strive for the ideal. Harsh reality of its own accord will create only
too many limitations. For that very reason, however, man must try
to serve the tdtimate goal, and failures must not deter him, any more
than he can abandon a system of justice merely because mistakes
creep into it, or any more than a medicament is discarded because
there will always he sickness in spite of it.

Care must be taken not to underestimate the force of an idea.
I should like to remind those who become faint-hearted in this
connection — in case they were ever soldiers — of a time whose
heroism represented the most overpowering proof 'of the force of
idealistic motives. For what made men die then was not concern
for their daily bread, but love of the fatherland, faith m its great-
ness, a general feeling for the honor of the nation. It was when
the German people moved away from these ideals to follow the
material premises of the revolution, and exchanged their arms for
knapsacks,^ that they arrived, not at the earthly paradise, but at
the purgatory of general contempt and, no less, of general misery.

Therefore it is really necessary to confront the master book-
keepers of the present material republic by faith in an ideal Reich.

^In Gennan there are two words for knapsack. A military knap-
sack is a Tornisler-, the word here used is Rucksack. This is the type
worn by hikers. But Hitler is referring to the hungry proletarians after
the War who went out foraging with knapsacks.

CHAPTER

III

Subjects and Citizens

In general the formation which today is
erroneously designated as a state knows only two varieties of
people: citizens and foreigners. Citizens are all those who either
by their birth or subsequent naturalization possess the right of
citizenship. Foreigners are all those who enjoy this same right in
another state. In between, there are comet-like phenomena: the
so-caUed stateless. These are people who have the honor of belong-
ing to no present-day state; in other words, who nowhere possess
the right of citizenship.

Today the right of citizenship, as mentioned above, is primarily
achieved by birth within the borders of a state. In this, race or
nationality play no role whatever. A Negro, who formerly lived
in the German protectorates and now has his residence in Ger-
many, gives birth to a ‘ German citizen’ in the person of his child.
Likewise every Jewish or Polish, African or Asiatic child can be
declared a German citizen without further ado.

Aside from becoming a citizen through birth, there is the pos-
sibility of naturalization later. It is connected with certain re-
quirements; for example, that the candidate in question is if pos-
sible no burglar or pimp; that he furthermore be politically un-
objectionable, in other words, a harmless political idiot; that
finally he should not fall a burden to the country which grants
him citizenship. In this materialistic age this means, of course, a
financial burden. Yes, it is even considered a desirable recom-

How TO Become a Citizen

439

mendation if you are presumably a good future taxpayer to ba«itf»n
the acquisition of present-day citizenship.

Racial objections play no r61e whatsoever in this.

The whole process of acquiring citizenship takes place not far
differently than admission into an automobile club. The man
makes his application, it is examined and passed upon, and one
day he receives a note informing him that he has become a citi-
zen, and even the form of this is cute and kittenish. The former
Zulu Kaffir in question is informed: ‘You have hereby become a
German!’

This magic trick is performed by a state president. What the
heavens could not accomplish, such an official Theophrastus
Paracelsus has accomplished in the twinkling of an eye. A simple
dab of the pen and a Mongolian Wenceslaus has suddenly become
a regular ‘ German.’

But not only do they not concern themselves about the race of
such a new citizen; they do not even pay any attention to his
physical health. Such a fellow may be as eaten by syphilis as he
likes, for the present state he is nevertheless highly welcome as a
citizen, provided that he does not, as above stated, represent a
financial burden and a political danger.

And so every year these formations, called states, take into
themselves poison elements which they can scarcely ever over-
come.

The citizen himself then is only distinguished from the for-
eigner by the fact that the road to all public offices is open to him,
that he may have to do military service, and that to make up for
this he can actively and passively participate in elections. By
and large this is all. For the protection of personal rights and of
personal freedom is equally enjoyed by foreigners, not seldom
more so; in any case, this applies in our present German Republic.

I know that people do not like to hear all this; but anything
more thoughtless, more hare-brained than our present-day citizen-
ship laws scarcely exists. There is today one state in which at
least weak beginnings toward a better conception are noticeable.
Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the American

440

Mein Kampf

Union, in which an effort is made to consult reason at least par-
tially. By refusing im migration on principle to elements in poor
health, by simply excluding certain races from naturalization, it
professes in slow beginnings a view which is peculiar to the
folkish state concept.

The folkish state divides its inhabitants into three classes:
citizens, subjects, and foreigners.

On principle only the status of subject is acquired by birth.
The status of subject as such does not confer the right to hold
public office, nor to carry on political activity in the sense of
active or passive participation in elections. As a matter of prin-
ciple, the race and nationality of every subject must be deter-
mined. The subject is free at any time to renoimce his status of
subject and become a citizen in the country whose nationality
corresponds to his own. The foreigner is distinguished from the
subject only by the fact that he is a subject of a foreign state.

The young subject of German nationality is obligated to
vmdergo the schooling presaibed for every German. He thus
submits to education to make him a racially conscious and
patriotic national comrade. Later he must perform the supple-
mentary physical exercises prescribed by the state, and finally he
enters the army. The training in the army is general; it must em-
brace every individual German and train him in the field of mili-
tary service made possible by his physical and intellectual ability.
Thereupon, after completion of his military di^, the right of
citizenship is most solemnly bestowed on the irreproachable,
healthy young man. It is the most precious document for his
whole life on earth. With it he enters upon aU the rights of
citizen and partakes of all his advantages. For the state must
make a sharp distinction between those who, as national com-
rades, are the cause and bearer of its existence and its greatness,
and those who only take up residence within a state, as ‘earning’
elements.

The bestowal of the certificate of citizenship must be associated
with a solenm oath to the national community and the state. In
this document there must lie a common bond which bridges all

The Citizen Is Lord of the Reich

441

other gaps. It must he a greater honor to he a street-cleaner and citi-
zen of this Reich than a king in a foreign state.

The citizen is privileged as against the foreigner. He is the lord of
the Reich. But this higher dignity also obligates. The man with-
out honor or characterj the common criminal, the traitor to the
fatherland, etc., can at any time be divested of this honor. He
thus again becomes a subject.

The German girl is a subject and only becomes a citizen when
she marries. But the right of citizenship can also be granted to
female German subjects active in economic hfei

CHAPTER

IV

*/

Personality and the Conception of the
Folkish State

T

X HE folkish National Socialist state sees its
chief task in educaiing and presersing the hearer of the state. It is
not sufficient to encourage the racial elements as such, to educate
them and finally in s truct them in the needs of practical life; the
state must also adjust its own organization to this task.

It would be lunacy to try to estimate the value of man accord-
ing to his race, thus declaring war on the Marxist idea that men
are equal, unless we are determined to draw the ultimate conse-
quences. And the ultimate consequence of recognizing the im-
portance of blood — that is, of the racial foundation in general —
is the transference of this estimation to the individual person. In
general, I must evaluate peoples differently on the basis of the
race they belong to, and the same applies to the individual men
within a national community. The realization that peoples are
not equal transfers itself to the individual man within a national
community, in the sense that men’s minds cannot be equal, since
here, too, the blood components, though equal in their broad out-
lines, are, in particular cases, subject to thousands of the finest
differentiations.

The first consequence of this realization might at the same time
be called the cruder one: an attempt to promote in the most
exemplary way those elements within the national community
that have been recognized as especially valuable from the racial
viewpoint and to provide for their special increase

The Aristocratic Principle

443

This task is crader because it can be recognized and solved al-
most mechanically. It is more difficult to recognize among the
whole people the minds that are most valuable in the intellectual
and ideal sense, and to gain for them that influence which not
only is the due of these superior minds, but which above all is
beneficial to the nation. This sifting according to capacity and
ability cannot be undertaken mechanically; it is a task which the
struggle of daily life unceasingly performs.

A philosophy of life which endeavors to reject the democratic
mass idea and give this earth to the best people — thai is, the highest
humanity — must logically obey the same aristocratic principle
within this people and make sure that the leadership and the
highest influence in this people fall to the best minds. Thus, il
builds, not upon the idea of the majority, hut upon the idea of
personality.

Anyone who believes today that a folkish National Socialist
state must distinguish itself from other states only in a purely
mechanical sense, by a superior construction of its economic life
— that is, by a better balance between rich and poor, or giving
broad sections of the population more right to influence the
economic process, or by fairer wages by elimination of excessive
wage differentials — has not gone beyond the most superficial
aspect of the matter and has not the faintest idea of what we
call a philosophy. All the things we have just mentioned offer not
the slightest guaranty of continued existence, far less of any
claim to greatness. A people which did not go beyond these
really superficial reforms would not obtain the least guaranty of
victory in the general struggle of nations. A movement which
finds the content of its mission only in such a general leveling,
assuredly just as it may be, will truly bring about no great and
profound, hence real, reform of existing conditions, since its
entire activity does not, in the last analysis, go beyond externals,
and does not give the people that inner armament which enables
it, with almost inevitable certainty I might say, to overcome in
the end those weaknesses from which we suffer today.

To understand this more easily, it may be expedient to cast

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one more glance at the real orig^s and causes of human cultural
development.

The first step which outwardly and visibly removed man from
the animal was that of invention. Invention itself is originally
based on the finding of stratagems and ruses, the use of which
facilitates the life struggle with other beings, and is sometimes
the actual prerequisite for its favorable course. These most
primitive inventions do not yet cause the personality to appear
with sufficient distinctness, because, of course, they enter the con-
sciousness of the future, or rather the present, human observer,
only as a mass phenomenon. Certain dodges and crafty measures
which man, for example, can observe in the animal catch his eye
only as a summary fact, and he is no longer in a position to estab-
lish or investigate their origin, but must simply content himself
with designating such phenomena as ‘instinctive.’

But in our case this last word means nothing at all. For anyone
who believes in a higher development of living creatures must
admit that every expression of their life urge and life struggle
must have had a beginning; that ont subject must have started it,
and that subsequently such a phenomenon repeated itself more
and more frequently and spread more and more, until at last it
virtually entered the subconscious of all members of a given
species, thus manifesting itself as an instinct.

This will be understood and believed more readily in the case
of man. His first intelligent measures in the struggle with other
beasts assuredly originate in the actions of individual, particularly
able subjects. Here, too, the personality was once unquestionably
the cause of decisions and acts which later were taken over by all
humanity and regarded as perfectly self-evident. Just as any
obvious military principle, which today has become, as it were,
the basis of all strategy, originally owed its appearance to one
absolutely distinct mind, and only in the course of many, perhaps
even thousands of years, achieved imiversal validity and was
taken entirely for granted.

Man complements this first invention by a second: he learns to
place other objects and also living creatures in the service of his

Personality and Cultural Progress

445

own struggle for self-preservation; and thus begins man’s real in-
ventive activity which today is generally visible. These matfirial
inventions, starting with the use of stone as a weapon and leading
to the domestication of beasts, giving man artificial fire, and so on
up to the manifold and amazing inventions of our day, show the
individual creator the more clearly, the closer the various inven-
tions lie to the present day, or the more significant and incisive
they are. At all events, we know that all the material inventions
we see about us are the result of the creative power and ability of
the individual personality. And all these inventions in the last
analysis help to raise man more and more above the level of the
animal world and finally to remove him from it. Thus, funda-
mentally, they serve the continuous process of higher human
development. But the very same thing which once, in the form
of the simplest ruse, facilitated the struggle for existence of the
man hunting in the primeval forest, again contributes, in the
shape of the most brilliant scientific knowledge of the present era,
to alleviate mankind’s struggle for existence and to forge its
weapons for the struggles of the future. All human thought and
invention, in their ultimate effects, primarily serve man’s struggle
for existence on this planet, even when the so-called practical use
of an invention or a discovery or a profound scientific insight into
the essence of things is not visible at the moment. All these things
together, by contributing to raise man above the living creatures
surrounding him, strengthen him and secure his position, so that
in every respect he develops into the dominant being on this earth.

Thus, all inventions are the result of an individual’s work.
All these individuals, whether intentionally or unintentionally,
are more or less great benefactors of all men. Their work subse-
quently gives millions, nay, billions of human creatures, instru-
ments with which to facilitate and carry out their life struggle.

If in the origin of our present material culture we always find
individuals in the form of inventors, complementing one another
and one building upon another, we find the same in the practice
and execution of the thing s devised and discovered by the inven-
tors. For aU productive processes in turn must in their origin be

m

Mein Kahpf

considered equivalent to inventions, hence dependent on the
individual. Even purely theoretical intellectual work, which in
particular cases is not measurable, yet is the premise for all
further material inventions, appears as the exclusive product of
the individual person. It is not the mass that invents and not the
majority that organizes or thinks, but in aU things only and al-
ways the individual man, the person.

A human community appears well organized only if it facili-
tates the labors of these creative forces in the most helpful way
and applies them in a manner beneficial to all. The most valuable
thing about the invention itseK, whether it lie in the material
field or in the world of ideas, is primarily the inventor as a per-
sonality. Therefore, to employ him in a way benefiting the
totality is the first and highest task in the organization of a
national community. Indeed, the organization itself must be a
realization of this principle. Thus, also, it is redeemed from the
curse of mechanism and becomes a living thing. It must itself be an
embodiment of the endeaxor to place thinking individuals above the
masses, thus subordinating the latter to the former.

Consequently, the organization must not only not prevent the
emergence of thinking individuals from the mass; on the contrary,
it must in the highest degree make this possible and easy by the
nature of its own being. In this it must proceed from the principle
that the salvation of mankind has never lain in the masses, but
in its creative minds, which must therefore really be regarded as
benefactors of the human raco. To assure them of the most deci-
sive influence and facilitate their work is in the interest of the
totality. Assuredly this interest is not satisfied, and is not
served by the domination of the unintelligent or incompetent, in
any case uninspired masses, but solely by the leadership of those
to whom Nature has given special gifts for this purpose.

The selection of these minds, as said before, is primarily ac-
complished by the hard struggle for existence. Many break and
perish, thus showing that they are not destined for tbe ultimate,
and in the end only a few appear to be chosen. In the fields of
thought, artistic creation, even, in fact, of economic life, this

Marxism Negates the Value of Personality 447

sdective process is still going on today, though, especially in the
latter field, it faces a grave obstacle. The administration of the
state and likewise the power embodied in the organized military
might of the nation are also dominated by these ideas. Here, too,
the idea of personality is everywhere dominant — its authority
downward and its responsibility toward the higher personality
above. Only political life has today completely turned away
from this most natural principle. While all human culture is
solely the result of the individual’s creative activity, everywhere,
and particularly in the highest leadership of the national com-
mimity, the principle of the value of the majority appears decisive,
and from that high place begins to gradually poison all life ; that is,
in reality to dissolve it. The destructive effect of the Jew’s activ-
ity in other national bodies is basically attributable only to his
eternal efforts to undermine the position of the personality in the
host-peoples and to replace it by the mass. Thus, the org anizin g
principle of Aryan humanity is replaced by the destructive prin-
ciple of the Jew. He becomes ‘ a ferment of decomposition ’ among
peoples and races, and in the broader sense a dissolver of human
culture.

Marxism presents itself as the perfection of the Jew’s attempt
to.exdude the pre-eminence of personality in all fields of human
life and replace it by the numbers of the mass. To this, in the
political sphere, corresponds the parliamentary form of govern-
ment, which, from the smallest germ cells of the municipality up
to the supreme leadership of the Reich, we see in such disastrous
operation, and in the economic sphere, the system of a trade-
union movement which does not serve the real interests of the
workers, but exclusively the destructive purposes of the interna-
tional world Jew. In precisely the measure in which the economy
is withdrawn from the influence of the personality principle and
instead exposed to the influences and effects of the masses, it
must lose its efficacy in serving all and benefiting all, and gradu-
ally succumb to a sure retrogression. All the shop organizations
which, instead of taking into account the interests of their em-
ployees, strive to gain influence on production, serve the same

448

Mein Kampe

purpose. They injure collective achievement, and thus in reality
injure individual achievement. For the satisfaction of the mem-
bers of a national body does not in the long run occur exclusively
through mere theoretical phrases, but by the goods of daily life
that fall to the individual and the ultimate resultant conviction
that a national community in the sum of its achievement guards
the interests of individuals.

It is of no importance whether Marxism, on the basis of its
ma«;s theory, seems capable of taking over and carrying on the
economy existing at the moment. Criticism with regard to the
soimdness or unsoundness of this principle is not settled by the
proof of its capacity to administer the existing order for the
future, but exclusively by the proof that it can itself create a
higher culture. Marxism might a thousand times take over the
existing economy and make it continue to work under its leader-
ship, but even success in this activity would prove nothing in the
face of the fact that it would not be in a position, by appl)dng its
principle itself, to create the same thing which today it takes over
in a finished state.

Of this Marxism has furnished practical proof. Not only that
it has nowhere been able to found and create a culture by itself;
actually it has not been able to continue the existing ones in ac-
cordance with its principles, but after a brief time has been forced
to return to the ideas embodied in the personality principle, in
the form of concessions; — even in its own organization it cannot
dispense with these principles.

The folkish philosophy is basically distinguished from the Marxist
philosophy by the fact that it not only recognizes the value of race, but
with it the importance of the personality, which it therefore makes one
of the pillars of its entire edifice. These are the factors which sus-
tain its view of life.

If the National Socialist movement did not understand the
fundamental importance of this basic realization, but instead were
merely to perform superficial patchwork on the present-day state,
or even adopt the mass standpoint as its own — then it would
really constitute nothing but a party in competition with the

The Best State Form

449

Marxists; in that case, it would not possess the right to call itself a
philosophy of life. If the social program of the movement con-
sisted only in pushing aside the personality and replacing it by
the masses, National Socialism itself would be corroded by the
poison of Marxism, as is the case with our bourgeois parties.

The folkish state must care for the welfare of its citizens by
recognizing in all and everything the importance of the value of
personality, thus in all fields preparing the way for that highest
measure of productive performance which grants to the individual
the highest measure of participation.

And accordingly, the folkish state must free all leadership and
especially the highest — that is, the political leadership — en-
tirely from the parliamentary principle of majority rule — in
other words, mass rule — and instead absolutely guarantee the
right of the personality.

From this the following realization results:

The best state constUtdion and state form is that which, with the
most unquestioned certainty, raises the best minds in the national
community to leading position and leading influence.

But as, in economic life, the able men cannot be appointed
from above, but must struggle through for themselves, and just as
here the endless schooling, ranging from the smallest business to
the largest enterprise, occurs spontaneously, with life alone giving
the examinations, obviously political minds cannot be ‘dis-
covered.’ Extraordinary geniuses permit of no consideration for
normal mankind.

From the smallest community cell to the highest leadership of
the entire Reich, the state must have the personality principle an-
chored in its organization.

There must be no majority decisions, but only responsible per-
sons, and the word ‘ council ’ must be restored to its original mean-
ing. Surely every man will have advisers by his side, but the deci-
sion will be made by one man.

The principle which made the Prussian army in its time into
the most wonderful instrument of the German people must some
day, in a transferred sense, become the principle of the construe-

450

Mein Kampf

tion of our whole state conception: authority of eoery leader dmn-
ward and responsUiility upward.

Even then it will not be possible to dispense with those cor-
porations which today we designate as parliaments. But their
councillors will then actually give counsel; responsibility, however,
can and may be borne only by one man, and therefore only he
alone may possess the authority and right to command.

Parliaments as such are necessary, because in them, above
all, personalities to which special responsible tasks can later be
entrusted have an opportunity gradually to rise up.

This gives the following picture:

The folkish state, from the township up to the Reich leadership,
has no representative body which decides anything by the major-
ity, but only advisory bodies which stand at the side of the elected
leader, receiving their share of work from him, and in turn if ne-
cessary assuming unlimited responsibility in certain fields, just
as on a larger scale the leader or chairman of the various corpora-
tions himself possesses.

As a matter of principle, the folkish state does not tolerate
asking advice or opinions in special matters — say, of an eco-
nomic nature — of men who, on the basis of their education and
activity, can understand nothing of the subject. It, therefore,
divides its representative bodies from the start into political and
professional chambers.

In order to guarantee a profitable cooperation between the two,
a special senate of the flite always stands over them.

In no chamber and in no senate does a vote ever take place.
They are working institutions and not voting machines. The
individual member has an advisory, but never a determining,
voice. The latter is the exclusive privilege of the responsible
chairman.

This principle — absolute responsibility unconditionally com-
bined with absolute authority — will gradually breed an 61 ite of
leaders such as today, in this era of irresponsible parliamentarian-
ism, is utterly inconceivable.

Thus, the political form of the nation wifi, be brought into

National Socialism and the Coming State 451

agreement with that law to which it owes its greatness in the cul-
tural and economic field.

As regards the possibility of putting these ideas into practice,
I beg you not to forget that the parliamentary principle of
democratic majority rule has by no means always dominated
mankind, but on the contrary is to be found only in brief periods
of history, which are always epochs of the decay of peoples and
states.

But it should not be believed that such a transformation can
be accomplished by purely theoretical measures from above, since
logically it may not even stop at the state constitution, but must
permeate all other legislation, and indeed all civil life. Such a
fundamental change can and will only take place through a move-
ment which is itself constructed in the spirit of these ideas and
hence bears the future state within itself.

Hence the National Socialist movement should today adapt
itself entirely to these ideas and carry them to practical fruition
within its own organization, so that some day it may not only
show the state these same guiding principles, but can also place
the completed body of its own state at its disposal.

CHAPTER

V

Philosophy and Organization

T

X HE folkish state, a general picture of
which I have attempted to draw in broad outlines, will not be
realized by the mere knowledge of what is necessary to this state.
It is not enough to know how a folkish state should look. Far
more important is the program for its aeation. We may not
expect the present parties, which after all are primarily bene-
ficiaries of the present state, to arrive of their own accord at a
change of orientation and of their own free will to modify their
present attitude. What makes this all the more impossible is
that their real leading elements are always Jews and only Jews.
And the development we are going through today, if continued
unobstructed, would fulfill the Jewish prophecy — the Jew would
really devour the peoples of the earth, would become their
master.

Thus, confronting the millions of German ‘bourgeois’ and
‘proletarians,’ who for the most part, from cowardice coupled
with stupidity, trot toward their ruin, he pursues his way in-
exorably, in the highest consciousness of his future goal. A party
which is led by him can, therefore, stand for no other interests
beside his interests; and with the concerns of Aryan nations,
these have nothing in common.

And so, if we wish to transform the ideal image of a folkish
state into practical reality, we must, independent of the powers
that have thus far ruled public life, seek a new force that is

Struggle and Criticism

453

willing and able to take up the struggle for such an idea. For
it will take a struggle, in view of the fact that the first task is
not creation of a folkish state conception, but above all eUmina-
tion of the existing Jewish one. As so frequently in history, the
main difficulty lies, not in the form of the new state of things^
but in making place for it. Prejudices and interests unite in a
solid phalanx and attempt with aU possible means to prevent the
victory of an idea that is displeasing to them or that menaces
them.

And so, unfortunately, the fighter for such a new idea, impor-
tant as it may be to put positive emphasis on it, is forced to
carry through first of all the negative part of the fight, that part
which should lead to the elimination of the present state of affairs.

A young doctrine of great and new fundamental significance
will, displeasing as this may be to the individual, be forced to
employ as its first weapon the probe of criticism in all its sharp-
ness.

It indicates a lack of deep insight into historical developments
when today people who call themselves folkish make a great
point of assuring us over and over that they do not plan to
engage in negative criticism, but only in constrttcHve work; this
absurd childish stanunering is ‘folkish’ in the worst sense and
shows how little trace the history even of their own times has
left in these minds. Marxism also had a goal, and it, too, has a
constructive activity (even if it is only to erect d despotism of
international world Jewish finance); but previously, neverthe-
less, it practiced criticism for seventy years, annihilating, disinte-
grating criticism, and again criticism, which continued until the
old state was undermined by this persistent corrosive acid and
brought to coUapse. Only then did its actual ‘ construction ’ begin.
And that was self-evident, correct and logical. An existing con-
dition is not eliminated just by emphasizing and arguing for a
future one. For it is not to be presumed that the adherents, let
alone the beneficiaries of the condition now existing, could all
be converted and won over to the new one merely by demon-
strating its necessity. On the contrary, it is only too possible

454

Mein Kamff

t^gt in this case two conditions will remain in existence side
by side, and that the so-called philosophy will become a party,
unable to raise itself above its limitations. For the philosophy is
intolerant; it cannot content itself with the role of one ‘party
beside others,’ but imperiously demands, not only its own exclu-
sive and unlimi ted recognition, but the complete transformation
of all public life in accordance with its views. It can, therefore,
not tolerate the simultaneous continuance of a body represent-
ing the former condition.

This is equally true of religions.

Christianity could not content itsdf with building up its ovm
altar; it was absolutely forced to undertake the destruction of
the heathen altars. Only from this fanatical intolerance could its
apodictic faith take form; this intolerance is, in fact, its absolute
presupposition.

The objection may very well be raised that such phenomena in
world history arise for the most part from specifically Jewish
modes of thought, in fact, that this type of intolerance and
fanaticism positively embodies the Jewish nature. This may be
a thousand times true; we may deeply regret this fact and estab-
lish with justifiable loathing that its appearance in the history
of mankind is something that was previously alien to history —
yet this does not alter the fact that this condition is with us
today. The men who want to redeem our German people from
its present condition have no need to worry their heads thinking
how lovely it would be if this and that did not exist; they must
try to ascertain how the given condition can be eliminated. A
philosophy filled with infernal intolerance will only be broken
by a new idea, driven forward by the same spirit, championed
by the same mighty will, and at the same time pure and abso-
lutely genuine in itself.

The individual may establish with pain today that with the
appearance of Christianity the first spiritual terror entered into
the far freer ancient world, but he will not be able to contest the
fact that since then the world has been afilicted and dominated
by this coercion, and that coercion is broken only by coercion.

Parties Tend to Compromise 455

and terror only by terror. Only then can a new state of aSairs
be constructively created.

Political parties are inclined to compromises; philosophies never.
Political parties even reckon with opponents; philosophies proclaim
their infallibility.

Political parties, too, almost always have the original purpose
of attaining exclusive despotic domination; a slight impulse
toward a philosophy is almost alwa5rs inherent in them. Yet the
very narrowness of their program robs them of the heroism which
a philosophy demands. The conciliatory nature of their will
attracts small and weakly spirits with which no crusades can be
fought. And so, for the most part, they soon bog down in their
own pitiful pettiness: They abandon the struggle for a philosophy
and attempt instead, by so-called ‘positive collaboration,’ to con-
quer as quickly as possible a little place at the feeding trough of
existing institutions and to keep it as long as possible. That is
their entire endeavor. And if they should be pushed away from
the general feeding crib by a somewhat brutal competing boarder,
their thoughts and actions are directed solely, whether by force
or trickery, toward pushing their way back to the front of the
hungry herd and finally, even at the cost of their holy conviction,
toward refreshing themselves at the beloved swill pail. Jackals
of politics!

Since a philosophy of life is never willing to share with another,
it cannot be willing either to collaborate in an existing regime
which it condemns, but feels obligated to combat this regime
and the whole hostile world of ideas with all possible means;
that is, to prepare its downfall.

This purely destructive fight — the danger of which is at once
recognized by all others and which consequently encounters
general resistance — as well as the positive strug^e, attacking to
twfllcB way for its own world of ideas, requires determined fighters.
And so a philosophy will lead its idea to victory only if it unites
the most courageous and energetic elements of its epoch and
people in its ranks, and puts them into the solid forms of a fight-
ing organization. For this, however, taking these elements into

456

Mein Kampf

consideration, it must pick out certam ideas from its general
world picture and dad them in a form which, in its precise,
slogan-like brevity, seems suited to serve as a creed for a new
community of men. While the program of a solely political party
is the formula for a healthy outcome of the next elections, the
program of a philosophy is the formulation of a dedaration of war
against the exis t ing order, against a definite state of affairs; in
siin rt, against an existing view of life in general.

It is not necessary that every individual fighting for this phil-
osophy should obtain a full insight and precise knowledge of the
ultimate ideas and thought processes of the leaders of the move-
ment. What is necessary is that some few, really great ideas be
made dear to him, and that the essential fundamental lines be
burned inex tin guishably into him, so that he is entirely permeated
by the necessity of the victory of his movement and its doctrine.
The individual soldier is not initiated into the thought processes
of higher strategy either. He is, on the contrary, trained in
rigid discipline and fanatical faith in the justice and power of
his cause, and taught to stake his life for it without reservation;
the same must occur with the individual adherent of a move-
ment of great scope, great future, and the greatest will.

Useless as an army would be, whose individual soldiers were
all generals, even if it were only by virtue of their education and
their insight, equally useless is a political movement, fighting for
a philosophy, if it is only a reservoir of ‘bright’ people. No, it
also needs the primitive soldier, since otherwise an inner discipline
is unobtainable.

It lies in the nature of an organization that it can only exist
if a broad mass, with a more emotional attitude, serves a high
intellectual leadership. A company of two hundred men of equal
intellectual ability would in the long run be harder to discipline
than a company of a hundred and ninety intellectually less capa-
ble men and ten with higher education.

Social Democracy in its day drew the greatest profit from this
fact. It took members of the broad masses, discharged from
mihtary service where they had been trained in discipline, and

Leadership and Following

457

drew them into its equally rigid party discipline. And its organ-
ization represented an army of officers and soldiers. The German
manual worker became the soldier, the Jewish intellectual the
officer; and the German trade-union officials can be regarded as
the corps of noncommissioned officers. The thing which our
bourgeoisie always viewed with headshaking, the fact that only
the so-called rmeducated masses belonged to the Marxist move-
ment, was in reality the basis for its success. For while the
bourgeois parties with their one-sided intellectualism constituted
a worthless undisciplined band, the Marxists with their unin-
tellectual human material formed an army of party soldiers,
who obeyed their Jewish leader as blindly as formerly their
German officer. The German bourgeoisie, which as a matter of
principle never concerned itself with psychological problems be-
cause it stood so high above them, found it, here too, unnecessary
to reflect, and recognize the deeper meaning, as well as the secret
danger, of this fact. They thought, on the contrary, that a
political movement, formed only from the circles of the ‘intelli-
gentsia,’ is for this very reason more valuable and possesses a
greater claim, in fact a greater likelihood, of taking over the
government than the uneducated masses. They never understood
that the strength of a political party lies by no means in the greatest
possible independent intellect of the individual members, but rather
in the disciplined obedience with which its members follow the in-
tellectual leadership. The decisive factor is the leadership itself.
If two bodies of troops battle each other, the one to conquer
wiU not be the one in which every individual has received the
highest strategic training, but that one which has the most
superior leadership and at the same time the most disciplined,
blindly obedient, best-driUed troop. 7 ;

This is the basic insight which we must constantly bear in
mind in examining the possibility of transforming a philosophy
into action.

And so, if, in order to carry a philosophy to victory, we must
transform it into a fighting movement, logically the program of
the movement must take into conaderation the human matojal

458

Mein Kampi

tha t stands at its disposal. As immutable as the ultimate aims
and the leading ideas must be, with equal wisdom and psychologi-
cal soundness the recruiting program must be adapted to the
minds of those without whose aid the most beautiful idea would
remain eternally an idea.

If the folkish idea wants to arrive at a clear success from the
unclear will of today, it must pick out from the broad world of its
ideas certain guiding principles, suited in their essence and content
to binding a broad mass of men, that mass which alone guarantees
the struggle for this idea as laid down in our philosophy.

Therefore, the program of the new movement was summed up
in a few guiding principles, twenty-five in aU. They were devised
to give, primarily to the man of the people, a rough picture of
the movement’s aims. They are in a sense a political creed, which
on the one hand recruits for the movement and on the other is
suited to unite and weld together by a commonly recognized
obligation those who have been recruited.

Here the following insight must never leave us; Since the
so-called program of the movement is absolutely correct in its
ultimate alms, but in its formulation had to take psychological
forces into account, in the course of time the conviction may well
arise that in individual instances certain of the guiding principles
ought perhaps to be framed differently, given a better formula-
tion. Every attempt to do this, however, usually works out
catastrophically. For in this way something which should be
unshakable is submitted to discussion, which, as soon as a single
point is deprived of its dogmatic, creedlike formulation, will not
automatically yield a new, better, and above all unified, formula-
tion, but will far sooner lead to endless debates and a general
confusion. In such a case, it always remains to be considered
which is better: a new, happier formulation which causes an
argument within the movement, or a form which at the moment
may not be the very best, but which represents a solid, tmshak-
able, inwardly unified organism. And a’ly examination will show
that the latter is preferable. For, since in changes it is always
merely the outward formulation tha* is involved, such correc-

Guiding Principles of the Movement

459

tions will again and again seem possible or desirable. Finally, in
view of the superficial character of men, there is the great danger
that they will see the essential task of a movement in this purely
outward formulation of a program. Then the will and the power
to fight for an idea recede, and the activity which should turn
outward will wear itself out in inner programmatic squabbles.

With a doctrine that is really sound in its broad outlines, it
is less harmful to retain a formulation, even if it should not
entirely correspond to reality, than by improving it to expose
what hitherto seemed a granite principle of the movement to
general discussion with all its evil consequences. Above aU, it is
impossible as long as a movement is still fighting for victory.
For how shall we fill people with blind faith in the correctness
of a doctrine, if we ourselves spread uncertainty and doubt by
constant changes in its outward structure?

The truth is that the most essential substance must never be
sought in the outward formulation, but only and always in the
inner sense. This is immutable; and in the interest of this im-
mutable inner sense, we can only wish that the movement pre-
serve the necessary strength to fight for it by avoiding all actions
that splinter and create uncertainty.

Here, too, we can learn by the example of the Catholic Church,
Though its doctrinal edifice, and in part quite superfluously,
comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the
less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its
dogmas. It has recognized quite correctly that its power of re-
sistance does not lie in its lesser or greater adaptation to the
scientific findings of the moment, which in reality are always
fluctuating, but rather in rigidly holding to dogmas once estab-
lished, for it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body
the character of a faith. And so today it stands more firmly
than ever. It can be prophesied that in exactly the same measure
in which appearances evade us, it will gain more and more blind
support as a static pole amid the flight of appearances,*

^'Der mhende Pol in der Erscheinungen Flucht’ (the static pole in the
flight of appearances). A farjiliar quotation. From Schillw’s Ver Spcuuer-
gang. line 134-

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Mein Kampf

And, so, anyone who really and seriously desires the victory of a
folkish philosophy must not only recognize thai, for the achievement
of such a success in the first place, only a movement capable of struggle
is suitable, but that, in the second place, such a movement itself will
stand firm only if based on unshakable certainty and firmness in its
program. It must not run the risk of making concessions in its
formulation Uf the momentary spirit of the times, but must retain
forever a form that has once been found favorable, in any case until
crowned by victory. Before that, any attempt to bring about argu-
ments as to the expediency of this or that point in the program
splinters the solidity and the fighting force of the movement,
proportionately as its adherents participate in such an inner dis-
cussion. This does not mean that an ‘improvement’ carried out
today might not tomorrow be subjected to renewed critical tests,
only to find a better substitute the day after tomorrow. Once
you tear down barriers in this connection, you open a road, the
beginning of which is known, but whose end is lost in the infinite.

This important realization had to be applied in the young
National Socialist movement. The National Socialist German
Workers’ Party obtained with its program of twenty-five theses a
foundation which must remain unshakable. The task of the present
and future members of our movement must not consist in a
critical revision of these theses, but rather in being bound by
them. For otherwise the next generation in turn could, with the
same right, squander its strength on such purely formal work
within the party, instead of recruiting new adherents and thereby
new forces for the movement. For the great number of the ad-
herents, the essence of our movement will consist less in the letter
of our theses than in the meaning which we are able to give them.

It was to these realizations that the young movement owed its
name; the program was later framed according to them and,further-
> more, the manner of their dissemination is based on them. In order
1 to help the folkish ideas to victory, a party of the people had to be
created, a party which consists not only of intellectual leaders, but
also of manual workers!

Any attempt to realize folkish ideas without such a militant

National Socialism and the Folkish Idea 461

organization would today, just as in tJie past arid in the eternal
future, remain without success. And so the movement has not
only the right, but also the duty, of regarding itself as a pioneer
and representative of these ideas. To the same degree as the
basic ideas of the National Socialist movement are folkish, the
folkish ideas are National Socialist. And if National Socialism
■wants to conquer, it must unconditionally and exclusively espouse
this truth. Here, too, it has not only the right, but also the duty,
of sharply emphasizing the fact that any attempt to put forward
the folkish idea outside the framework of the National Socialist
German Workers’ Party is impossible, and in most cases based
on a positive swindle.

If today anyone reproaches the movement for acting as if
the folkish idea were their monopoly, there is but one answer:

Not only a monopoly, but a working monopoly.

For what previously existed under this concept was not suited
to influence the destiny of our people even in the slightest, since
all these ideas lacked a clear and coherent formulation. For the
most part there were single, disconnected ideas of greater or lesser
soundness, not seldom standing in mutual contradiction, in no
case having any inner tie between them. And even had such a
tie been present, in its weakness it would never have sufficed to
orientate and build a movement on.

Only the National Socialist movement accomplished this.

* * *

If today all sorts of dubs and clublets, groups and grouplets,
and, if you will, ‘big parties’ lay daim to the word ‘folkish,’ this
in itself is a consequence of the influence of the National Socialist
movement. Without Us work, it would never have occurred to dll
these organizaiions even to pronounce the word ‘folkish.' This
word would have meant nothing to them, and especially their
leading minds would have stood in no relation of any sort to
this concept. Only the work of the NSDAP for the first time
made this concept a word^full of content, which is now taken up
by every conceivable kind of people; above all, in its own success-

462

Mein Kampe

ful campaigning activity, it showed and demonstrated the force
of these foMsh ideas, so that mere desire to get ahead forces the
others, ostensibly at least, to desire similar ends.

Just as hitherto they used everything for their petty election
speculation, the folkish concept has today remained for them
only an external empty slogan with which they attempt to
counterbalance, among their own members, the attractive force
of the National Socialist movement. For it is only concern for
their own existence as well as fear of the rise of our new phi-
losophy-bome movement, whose universal importance as well as
its dangerous exclusiveness they sense, that puts into their
mouth words which eight years ago they did not know, seven
years ago ridiculed, six years ago branded as absurd, five years
ago combated, four years ago hated, three years ago persecuted,
only at length to annex them two years ago, and, combined with
the rest of their vocabulary, to use them as a battle-cry in the
fight.

And even today we must point out again and again that all
these parties lack the slightest idea of what the German people
needs. The most striking proof of this is the superficiality with
which they mouth the word ‘folkish.’

And no less dangerous are all those who horse aroimd pretend-
ing to be folkish, forge fantastic plans, for the most part based
on nothing but some idie fixe, which in itself might be sound, but
in its isolation remains none the less without any importance for
the formation of a great xmified fighting coirununity, and in no
case is suited to building one. These people, who partly from
their own thinking, partly from what they have read, brew up a
program, are frequently more dangerous than the open enemies
of the foUdsh idea. In the best case they are sterile theoreticians,
but for the most part disastrous braggarts, and not seldom they
believe that with flowing beards and primeval Teutonic gestures
they can mask the intellectual and mental hollowness of their
activities and abilities.

In contrast to all these useless attempts, it is therefore good
if we recall to mind the time in which the young National Socialist
movement began its struggle.

CHAPTER

VI

The Struggle of the Early Period — the
Significance of the Spoken Word

HE first great meeting on February 24,
1920, in the Festsaal [Banquet Hall] of the Hofbrauhaus, had
not died down in our ears when the preparations for the next were
made. While up till then it had been considered risky to hold a
little meeting once a month or even once every two weeks in a
dty like Munich, a large mass meeting was now to take place
every seven days; in other words, once a week. I do not need to
assure you that there was but one fear that constantly tormented
us: would the people come and would they listen to us? — though
I personally, even then, had the unshakable conviction that once
they were there, the people would stay and follow the speech.

In this period the Festsaal of the Munich Hofbrauhaus assumed
an almost sacred significance for us National Socialists. Every
week a meeting, almost always in this room, and each time the
hall better filled and the people more devoted. Beginning vfith
the ‘War Guilt,’ which at that time nobody bothered about,
and the ‘Peace Treaties,’ nearly everything was taken up that
seemed agitationally expedient or ideologically necessary. Es-
pecially to the peace treaties themselves the greatest attention
was given. What prophecies the young movement kept making
to the great masses! And nearly all of which have now been
realized! Today it is easy to speak or write about these things.
But in those days a public mass meeting, attended, not by
bourgeois shopkeepers, but by incited proletarians, and dealing

464

Mkin Kampf

with the topic, ‘The Peace Treaty of Versailles,’ was taken as an
attack on the Republic and a sign of a reactionary if not monar-
chistic attitude. At the very first sentence containing a criticism of
Versailles, you had the stereotyped cry flung at you: ‘What about
Brest-Litovsk?’ ‘And Brest-Litovsk?’ The masses roared this
again and again, imtil gradually they grew hoarse or the speaker
finally gave up his attempt to convince them. You felt like dash-
ing your head against the wall in despair over such people!
They did not want to hear or understand that Versailles was a
sbamp and a disgrace, and not even that this dictated peace was
an unprecedented pillaging of our people. The destructive work
of the Marxists and the poison of enemy propaganda had de-
prived the people of any sense. And yet we had not even the
right to complain! For how immeasurably great was the blame
on another side! What had the bourgeoisie done to put a halt
to this frightful disintegration, to oppose it and open the way
to truth by a better and more thorough enlightenment? Nothing,
and again nothing. In those days I saw them nowhere, all the
great folkish apostles of today. Perhaps they spoke in little clubs,
at teatables, or in circles of like-minded people, but where they
should have been, among the wolves, they did not venture; except
if there was a chance to howl with the pack.

But to me it was clear in those days that for the small basic
nucleus which for the present constituted the movement, the
question of war guUt had to be cleared up, and cleared up in the
sense of historic truth. That our movement should transmit to
the broadest masses knowledge of the peace treaty was the prem-
ise for the future success of the movement. At that time, when
they all still regarded this peace as a success of democracy, we
had to form a front against it and engrave ourselves forever in
the minds of men as an enemy of this treaty, so that later, when
the harsh reality of this treacherous frippery would be revealed
in its naked hate, the recollection of our position at that time
would win us confidence.

Even then I always came out in favor of taking a position in
important questions of principle against all public opinion when

Against the Stream

465

it assumed a false attitude — disregarding all considerations of
popularity, hatred, or struggle. The NSDAP should not become
a constable of public opinion, but must dominate it. It must not
become a servant of the masses, but their master!

There exists, of course, and especially for every movement that
is still weak, a great temptation, in moments when a more power-
ful enemy has succeeded in driving the people to a*mad decision
or to a false attitude through his arts of seduction, to go along
and join the shouting, particularly when there are a few reasons —
even if they are merely illusory — which, from the standpoint of
the young movement itself, might argue for this course. Human
cowardice will seek such reasons so vigorously that it almost
always finds something which would give a semblance of justi-
fication, even from one’s ‘own standpoint,’ for participating in
such a crime.

I have several times experienced such cases, in which supreme
energy was necessary to keep the ship of the movement from
drifting with the artificially aroused general current or rather
from being driven by it. The last time was when our infernal
press, to which the existence of the German people is Hecuba,
succeeded in puffing up the South Tyrol question to an impor-
tance which will be catastrophic for the German people. Without
considering whom they were serving thereby, many so-called
‘national’ men and parties and organizations, solely from
cowardice in the face of Jew-incited public opinion, joined the
general outcry and senselessly helped to support the fight against
a system which we Germans, precisely in this present-day situa-
tion, must feel to be the sole ray of light in this degenerating
world. While the mternational world Jew slowly but surely
strangles us, our so-called patriots shouted against a man and a
system which dared, in one corner of the earth at least, to free
themselves from the Jewish-Masonic embrace and oppose a na-
tionalistic resistance to this international world poisoning. It
was, however, too alluring for weak characters simply to set
their sails by the wind and capitulate to the clamor of public
opinion. And a capitulation it was! Men are such base liars that

466

Mein Kampf

they may not admit it, even to themselves, but it remains the
truth that only cowardice and fear of the popular sentiment
stirred up by the Jews impelled them to join in. All other explana-
tions are miserable evasions devised by the petty sinner conscious
of his guilt.

And so it was necessary to shake the movement with an iron
fist to preserve it from ruin by this tendency. To attempt such
a shift at a moment when public opinion, fanned by every
driving force, was burning only in one direction is indeed not
very popular at the moment and sometimes puts the venture-
some leader in almost mortal peril. But not a few men in history
have at such moments been stoned for an action for which pos-
terity, at a later date, had every cause to thank them on its knees.

It is with this that a movement must reckon and not with the
momentary approval of the present. It may be that in such
hours the individual feels afraid; but he must not forget that
after every such hour salvation comes at length, and that a
movement that wants to renew a world must serve, not the
moment, but the future.

In this connection it can be established that the greatest and
most enduring successes in history tend for the most part to be
those which in their beginnings found the least understanding
because they stood in the sharpest conflict with general public
opinion, with its ideas and its will.

Even then, on the first day of our public appearance, we had a
chance to experience this. Truly we did not ‘curry favor with
the masses,’ but everywhere opposed the lunacy of these people.
Nearly always it came about that in these years I faced an as-
semblage of people who believed the opposite of what I wanted
to say, and wanted the opposite of what I believed. Then it was
the work of two hours to lift two or three thousand people out
of a previous conviction, blow by blow to shatter the foundation
of their previous opinions, and finally to lead them across to our
convictions and our philosophy of life.

In those days I learned something important in a short time,
to strike the wapoti of reply out of the enemy's hand myself. We

Enlightenment on the Peace Treaties

467

soon noticed that our opponents, especially their HigniBcinn
speakers, stepped forward with a definite ‘repertory’ in which
constantly recurring objections to our assertions were raised, so
that the uniformity of this procedure pointed to a conscious,
unified schooling. And that was indeed the case. Here we had an
opportunity to become acquainted with the incredible discipline
of our adversaries’ propaganda, and it is still my pride today to
have found the means, not only to render this propaganda ineffec-
tive, but in the end to strike its makers with their own weapon
Two years later I was a master of this art.

In every single speech it was important to realize clearly in
advance the presumable content and form of the objections to be
expected in the discussion, and to puU every one of them apart
in the speech itself. Here it was expedient to cite the possible
objections ourselves at the outset and demonstrate their unten-
ability; thus, the listener, even if he had come stuffed full of the
objections he had been taught, but otherwise with an honest
heart, was more easily won over when we disposed of the doubts
that had been imprinted on his memory. The stuff that had been
drummed into him was automatically refuted and his attention
drawn more and more to the speech.

This is the reason why, right after my first lecture on the
‘Peace Treaty of Versailles,' which I had delivered to the troops
while stHl a so-called ‘educator,’ I changed the lecture and now
spoke of the ‘Peace Treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Versailles.’
For after a short time, in fact, in the course of the discussion
about this first speech of mine, I was able to ascertain that the
people really knew nothing at all about the peace treaty of Brest-
Litovsk, but that the adroit propaganda of their parties had
succeeded in representing this very treaty as one of the most
shameful acts of rape in the world. The perastence with which
this lie was presented over and over to the great masses accounted
for the fact that millions of Germans regarded the peace treaty
of Ver saille s as nothing more than just retribution for the crime
committed by us at Brest-Litovsk, thus viewing any real struggle
against Versailles as an injustice and sometimes remaining in the

468

Mein Kampf

sincerest moral indignation. And this among other things was
why the shameless and monstrous word ‘reparations’ was able
to make itself at home in Gennany. This vile hypocrisy really
seemed to millions of our incited national comrades an accom-
plishment of higher justice. Dreadful, but it was so. The best
proof of this was ofiered by the propaganda I initiated against
the peace treaty of Versailles, which I introduced by some en-
lightenment regarding the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. I contrasted
the two peace treaties, compared them point for point, showed the
actual boundless humanity of the one treaty compared to the
in hum a n cruelty of the second, and the result was telling. At
that time I spoke on this theme at meetings of two thousand
people, and often I was struck by the glances of three thousand
six hundred hostile eyes. And three hours later I had before me a
surging mass full of the holiest indignation and boundless wrath.
Again a great lie had been tom out of the hearts and brains of a
crowd numbering thousands, and a tmth implanted in its place.

I considered these two lectures on ‘The True Causes of the
World War’ and on ‘The Peace Treaties of Brest-Litovsk and
Versailles,’ the most important of all, and so I repeated and re-
peated them dozens of times, always renewing the form, until,
on this point at least, a certain clear and unified conception be-
came current among the people from among whom the move-
ment gathered its first members.

For myself, moreoever, the meetings had the advantage that
I gradually transformed myself into a speaker for mass meetings,
that I became practiced in the pathos and the gestures which a
great hall, with its thousands of people, demands.

At that time, except — as already emphasized — in small
circles, I saw no enlightenment in this direction from the parties
which today have their mouths so full of words and act as if they
had brought about the change in public opinion. When a so-called
‘national politician’ somewhere delivered a speech along these
lines, it was only to circles who for the most part already shared
his conviction, and for whom his utterances represented at most
an intensification of their own opinions. This was not the im-

Strength of the Spoken Word

469

portant thing at that time; the important thing was to win by
enlightenment and propaganda those people who, by virtue of
their education and opinions, still stood on hostile ground.

The leaflet, too, was put into the service of this enlightenment.
While stUl in the army, I had written a leaflet comparing the
peace treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Versailles, and it was dis-
tributed in large editions. Later I took over stocks, of it for the
party, and here again the effect was good. The first meetings,
in general, were distinguished by the fact that the tables were
covered with all sorts of leaflets, newspapers, pamphlets, etc.
But the chief emphasis was laid on the spoken word. And ac-
tually it alone — for general psychological reasons — is able to
bring about really great changes.^

I have already stated in the first volume that all great, world-
shaking events have been brought about, not by written matter,
but by the spoken word. This led to a lengthy discussion in a
part of the press, where, of course, such an assertion was sharply
attacked, particularly by our bourgeois wiseacres. But the very
reason why this occurred confutes the doubters. For the bour-
geois intelligentsia protest against such a view only because they
themselves obviously lack the power and ability to influence the
masses by the spoken word, since they have thrown themselves
more and more into purely literary activity and renounced the
real agitational activity of the spoken word. Such habits neces-
sarily lead in time to what distinguishes our bourgeoisie today;
that is, to the loss of the psychological instinct for riass efect and
mass injhience.

While the speaker gets a continuous correction of his speech
from the crowd he is addressing, since he can always see in the
faces of his listeners to what extent they can follow his arguments
with understanding and whether the impression and the effect of
his words lead to the desired goal — the writer does not know his
readers at all. Therefore, to begin with, he will not aim at a
definite mass before his eyes, but will keep his arguments entirely
general. By this to a certain degree he loses psychological subtlety
and in consequence suppleness. And so, by and large, a brilliant

470

Mein Kanpf

speaker will be able to write better than a brilliant writer can
speak, unless he continuously practices this art. On top of this
there is the fact that the mass of people as such is lazy; that they
remain inertly in the spirit of their old habits and, left to them-
selves, will take up a piece of written matter only reluctantly if
it is not in agreement with what they themselves believe and
does not bring them what they had hoped for. Therefore, an
article with a definite tendency is for the most part read only
by people who can already be reckoned to this tendency. At
most a leaflet or a poster can, by its brevity, count on getting a
moment’s attention from someone who thinks differently. The
picture in all its forms up to the fiilm has greater possibilities.
Here a man needs to use his brains even less; it suffices to look,
or at most to read extremely brief texts, and thus many will
more readily accept a pictorial presentation than read an article
of any length. The picture brings them in a much briefer time,
I might almost say at one stroke, the enlightenment which they
obtain from written matter only after arduous reading.

The essential point, however, is that a piece of literature never
knows into what hands it will fall, and yet must retain its definite
form. In general the effect will be the greater, the more this
form corresponds to the intellectual level and nature of those
very people who will be its readers. A book that is destined for
the broad masses must, therefore, attempt from the very begin-
ning to have an effect, both in style and elevation, different from
a work intended for higher intellectual classes.

Only by this kind of adaptability does written matter approach
the spoken word. To my mind, the speaker can treat the same
theme as the book; he will, if he is a brilliant popular orator, not
be likely to repeat the same reproach and the gamp substance
twice in the same form. He will always let himself be borne by
the great masses in such a way that instinctively the very words
come to his lips that he needs to speak to the hearts of Ifis audi-
ence. And if he errs, even in the slightest, he has the living cor-
rection before him. As I have said, he can read from the facial
expression of his audience whether, firstly, they understand what

Strength op the Spoken Word

471

he is saying, whether, secondly, they can follow the speech as a
whole, and to what extent, thirdly, he has convinced them of the
soundness of what he has said. If — firstly — he sees that they
do not understand him, he will become so primitive and clear in
his explanations that even the last member of his audience has to
imderstand him; if he feels — secondly — that they cannot
follow him, he will construct his ideas so cautiously and slowly
that even the weakest member of the audience is not left behind,
and he will — thirdly — if he suspects that they do not seem
convinced of the soundness of his argument, repeat it over and
over in constantly new examples. He himself will utter their
objections, which he senses though unspoken, and go on confut-
ing them and exploding them, until at length even the last group
of an opposition, by its very bearing and facial expression, en-
ables him to recognize its capitulation to his arguments.

Here again it is not seldom a question of overcoming prejudices
which are not based on reason, but, for the most part uncon-
sciously, are supported only by sentiment. To overcome this
barrier of instinctive aversion, of emotional hatred, of prejudiced
rejection, is a thousand times harder than to correct a faulty or
erroneous scientific opinion. False concepts and poor knowledge
can be eliminated by instruction, the resistance of the emotions
never. Here only an appeal to these mysterious powers them-
selves can be effective; and the writer can hardly ever accomplish
this, but almost exclusively the orator.

The most striking proof of this is furnished by the fact that,
despite a bourgeois press that is often very skillfully gotten up,
flooding our people with editions running into millions, this press
could not prevent the masses from becoming the sharpest enemy
of its own bourgeois world. The whole newspaper flood and all
the books that are turned out year after year by the intellectuals
slide off the millions of the lower classes like water from oiled
leather. This can prove only two things: either the unsoundness
of the content of this whole literary production of ouj’ bourgeois
world or the impossibility of reaching the heart of the broad
masses solely by written matter. Especially, indeed, when this

472

Mein Kamff

written matter demonstrates so unpsychological an attitude as
is here the case.

Let no one reply (as a big German national newspaper in
Berlin tried to do) that Marxism itself, by its writings, especially
by the effect of the great basic work of Karl Marx, provides proof
counter to this assertion. Seldom has anyone made a more super-
ficial attempt to support an erroneous view. What gave Marxism
its astonishing power over the great masses is by no means the
formal written work of the Jewish intellectual world, but rather
the enormous oratorical propaganda wave which took possession
of the great masses in the course of the years. Of a hundred
thousand German workers, not a hundred on the average know
this work, which has always been studied by a thousand times
more intellectuals and especially Jews than by real adherents of
this movement from the great lower classes. And this work was
not written for the great masses, but exclusively for the intellec-
tual leadership of that Jewish machine for world conquest; it
was stoked subsequently with an entirely different fuel: the press.
For that is what distinguishes the Marxist press from our bour-
geois press. The Marxist press is written by agitators, and the
bourgeois press would like to carry on agitation by means of writers.
The Social Democratic yeUow journalist, who almost always
goes from the meeting hall to the newspaper office, knows his
public like no one else. But the bourgeois scribbler who comes
out of his study to confront the great masses is nauseated by
their very fumes and faces them helplessly with the written word.

What has won the millions of workers for Marxism is less the
literary style of the Marxist church fathers than the indefatiga-
ble and truly enormous propaganda work of tens of thousands
of untiring agitators, from the great agitator down to the small
trade-union official and the shop steward and discussion speaker;
this work consisted of the hundreds of thousands of meetings at
which, standing on the table in smoky taverns, these people's
orators hammered at the masses and thus were able to acquire
a marvelous knowledge of this human material which really put
them in a position to choose the best weapons for attacking the

Requirements for Effective Oratory

473

f 01 tress of public opinion. And it consisted, furthermore, in the
gigantic mass demonstrations, these parades of hundreds of
thousands of men, which burned into the small, wretched indi-
vidual the proud conviction that, paltry worm as he was, he was
nevertheless a part of a great dragon,^ beneath whose burning
breath the hated bourgeois world would some day go up in fire
and flame and the proletarian dictatorship would .celebrate its
ultimate final victory.

Such propaganda produced the people who were ready and
prepared to read a Social Democratic press, however, a press
which itself in turn is not written, but which is spoken. For,
while in the bourgeois camp professors and scholars, theoreticians
and writers of all sorts, occasionally attempt to speak, in the
Marxist movement the speakers occasionally try to write. And
precisely the Jew, who is especially to be considered in this con-
nection, will, in general, thanks to Ms lying dialectical skill and
suppleness, even as a writer be more of an agitational orator
than a literary creator.

That is the reason why the bourgeois newspaper world (quite
aside from the fact that it, too, is mostly Jewified and therefore
has no interest in really instructing the great masses) cannot
exert the slightest influence on the opinion of the broadest sections
of our people.

How hard it is to upset emotional prejudices, moods, senti-
ments, etc., and to replace them by others, on how many scarcely
calculable influences and conditions success depends, the sensi-
tive speaker can judge by the fact that even the time of day in
which the lecture takes place can have a decisive influence on the
effect. The same lecture, the same speaker, the same theme, have
an entirely different effect at ten o’clock in the morning, at three
o’clock in the afternoon, or at night. I myself as a beginner
organized meetings for the morning, and especially remember
a rally wMch we held in the Munich Kindi Keller as a pro-
test ‘against the oppression of German territories.’ At that
time it was Munich’s largest hall and it seemed a very great

^ ‘Ah kleiner Wurm dennoch died eines grossen Drachens zu sein.’

474

Mein Xamfe

venture. In order to make attendance particularly easy for the
adherents of the movement and all the others who came, I set
the meeting for a Sunday morning at ten o’clock. The result
was depressing, yet at the same time extremely instructive:
the hall was full, the impression really overpowering, but the
mood ice cold; no one became warm, and I myseK as a speaker
felt profoundly unhappy at being unable to create any bond,
not even the slightest contact, between myself and my audience.
J thought I had not spoken worse than usual; but the effect
seemed to be practically nil. Utterly dissatisfied, though richer
by one experience, I left the meeting. Tests of the same sort
that I later undertook led to the same result.

This should surprise no one. Go to a theater performance and
witness a play at three o’clock in the afternoon and the same
play with the same actors at eight at night, and you will be
amazed at the difference in effect and impression. A man with
fine feelings and the power to achieve clarity with regard to this
mood will be able to establish at once that the impression made
by the performance at three in the afternoon is not as great as
that made in the evening. The same applies even to a movie.
This is important because in the theater it might be said that
perhaps the actor does not take as much pains in the afternoon
as at night. But a film is no different in the afternoon than at
nine in the evening. No, the time itself exerts a definite effect,
just as the hall does on me. There are halls which leave people
cold for reasons that are hard to discern, but which somehow
oppose the most violent resistance to any creation of mood.
Traditional memories and ideas that are present in a man can
also decisively determine an impression. Thus, a performance of
Parsifal in Bayreuth will always have a different effect than
anywhere else in the world. The mysterious magic of the bouse
on the Festspielhiigel in the old city of the margraves cannot be
replaced or even compensated for by externals.

In all these cases we have to do with an encroachment upon
man’s freedom of will. This applies most, of course, to meetings
attended by people with a contrary attitude of will,, who must

Orators and Revolution

475

now be won over to a new will. In the morning and even during
the day people’s will power seems to struggle with the greatest
energy against an attonpt to force upon them a strange will and
a strange opinion. At night, however, they succumb more
easily to the dominating force of a stronger will. For, in truth,
every such meeting represents a wrestling bout between two
opposing forces. The superior oratorical art of a dominating
preacher will succeed more easily in winning to the new will
people who have themselves eaqierienced a weakening of their
force of resistance in the most natural way than those who are
still in full possession of their mental tension and will.

The same purpose, after all, is served by the artificially made
and yet mysterious twilight in Catholic churches, the burning
lamps, incense, censers, etc.

In this wrestling bout of the speaker with the adversaries he
wants to convert, he wiU gradually achieve that wonderful sensi-
tivity to the psychological requirements of propaganda, which the
writer almost always lacks. Hence the written word in its limited
effect will in general serve more to retain, to reinforce, to deepen,
a point of view or opinion that is already present. Really great
historical changes are not induced by the written word, but at
most accompanied by it.

Let no one believe that the French Revolution would ever have
come about through philosophical theories if it had not found
an army of agitators led by demagogues in the grand style, who
whipped up the passions of the people tormented to begin with,
until at last there occurred that terrible volcanic eruption which
held all Europe rigid with fear. And likewise the greatest revolu-
tionary upheaval of the most recent period, the Bolshevist Revo-
lution in Russia, was brought about, not by Lenin’s writings,
but by the hate-fomenting oratorical activity of countless of the
greatest and the smallest apostles of agitation.

The illiterate common people were not, forsooth, fired with
enthusiasm for the Communist Revolution by the theoretical
reading of Karl Marx, but solely by the glittering heavQi which
thousands of agitators, themselves, to be sure, all in the aervioe
of an idea, talked into the people.

476

Mein Kampf

And that has always been so and will eternally remain so.

It is entirely in keeping with the stubborn unworldliness of
our German intelligentsia to believe that the writer must neces-
sarily be mentally superior to the speaker. This conception is
illustrated in the most precious way by a criticism appearing in
the above-mentioned national newspaper, in which it is stated
that one is so' often disappointed to see the speech of a recognized
great orator suddenly in print. This reminds me of another criti-
cism which came into my hands in the course of the War; it
painfully subjected the speeches of Lloyd George, who at that
time was still munitions minister, to the magnifying glass, only
to arrive at the brilliant discovery that these speeches were
scientifically inferior products and hackneyed to boot. Later, in
the form of a little volume, these speeches came into my own
hands, and I had to laugh aloud that an average German knight
of the ink-pot should possess no understanding for these psycho-
logical masterpieces in the art of mass propaganda. This man
judged these speeches solely according to the impression they
left on his own blas6 nature, while the great English demagogue
had set out solely to exert the greatest possible effect on the
mass of his listeners, and in the broadest sense on the entire
English lower class. Regarded from this standpoint, the speeches
of this Englishman were the most wonderful performances, for
they testified to a positively amazing knowledge of the soul of the
broad masses of the people. And their effect was truly powerful.

Compare to it the helpless stammering of a Bethmann-Hollweg.
These speeches, to be sure, were apparently wittier, but in reality
they only showed this man’s inability to speak to his people,
which he simply did not know. Nevertheless, the average sparrow
brain of a German scribbler, equipped, it goes without saying,
with a high scientific education, manages to judge the intelli-
gence of the English minister by the impression which a speech
aimed at mass effect makes on his own brain, calcified with sheer
science, and to compare it with that of a German statesman
whose brilliant chatter naturally finds more receptive soil in
him. Lloyd George proved that he was not only the equal in

Necessity of the Mass Meeting

477

genius of a Bethmann-HoUweg, but was a thousand times his
superior, precisely by the fact that in his speeches he found that
form and that expression which opened to him the heart of his
people and in the end made this people serve his will completely.
Precisely in the primitiveness of his language, the primordiality
of its forms of expression, and the use of easily intelligible ex-
amples of the simplest sort lies the proof of the towgring political
ability of this Englishman. For I must not measure the speech of a
statesman to his people by the impression which it leaves in a uni-
versity professor, hut by the effect it exerts on the people. And this
alone gives the standard for the spealter’s genius.

* * #

The amazing development of our movement, which only a few
years ago was founded out of the void and today is considered
worthy to be sharply persecuted by all the inner and outer ene-
mies of our people, must be attributed to the constant considera-
tion and application of these realizations.

Important as the movement’s literature may be, it will in our
present position be more important for the equal and uniform
training of the upper and lower leaders than for the winning of
the hostile masses. Only in the rarest cases will a convinced
Social Democrat or a fanatical Communist condescend to acquire
a National Socialist pamphlet, let alone a book, to read it and
from it gain an insight into our conception of life or to study the
critique of his own. Even a newspaper will be read but very
seldom if it does not bear the party stamp. Besides, this would
be of little use; for the general aspect of a single copy of a news-
paper is so chopped up and so divided in its effect that looking
at it once cannot be expected to have any inffuence on the reader.
We may and must expect no one, for whom pennies count, to
subscribe steadily to an opposing newspaper merely from the
urge for objective enlightenment. Scarcely one out of ten
thousand will do this. Only a man who has already been won to

478

Mein Kampf

the movement will steadily read the party organ, and he will
read it as a running news service of his movement.

The case is quite different with the ‘spoken’ leaflet! The man
in the street will far sooner take it into his hands, especially if he
gets it for nothing, and all the more if the headlines plastically
treat a topic which at the moment is in everyone’s mouth. By a
more or less. thorough perusal, it may be possible by such a
leaflet to call his attention to new viewpoints and attitudes, even
in fact to a new movement. But even this, in the most favorable
case, will provide only a slight impetus, never an accomplished
fact. For the leaflet, too, can only suggest or point to something,
and its effect will only appear in combination with a subsequent
more thoroughgoing instruction and enlightenment of its readers.
And this is and remains the mass meeting.

The mass meeting is also necessary for the reason that in it the
individual, who at first, while becoming a supporter of a young
movement, feels lonely and easily succumbs to the fear of being alone,
for the first time gets the picture of a larger community, which in
most people has a strengthening, encouraging effect. The same man,
within a compmy or a battalion, surrounded by all his comrades,
would set out on an attack with a lighter heart than if left en-
tirely on his own. In the crowd he always feels somewhat shel-
tered, even if a thousand reasons actually argue against it.

But the community of the great demonstration not only
strengthens the individual, it also unites and helps to create an
esprit de corps. The man who is exposed to grave tribulations,
as the first advocate of a new doctrine in his factory or workshop,
absolutely needs that strengthening which lies in the conviction
of being a member and fighter in a great comprehensive body.
And he obtains an impression of this body for the first time in the
mass demonstration. When from his little workshop or big fac-
tory, in which he feels very small, he steps for the first time into
a mass meeting and has thousands and thousands of people of
the same opinions around him, when, as a seeker,^ he is swept

* ‘Als Suchender.' A Wagnerian phrase, which Hitler was apparently
determined to use at all costs.

Necessity oe the Mass Meeting

479

away by three or tour thousand others into the mighty effect of
suggestive intoxication and enthusiasm, when the visible success
and agreement of thousands confirm to him the rightness of
the new doctrine and for the first time arouse doubt in the truth
of his previous conviction — then he himself has succumbed to
the magic influence of what we designate as ‘mass suggestion.’
The wiU, the longing, and also the power of thousands are accumu-
lated in every individual. The man who enters such a meeting
doubting and wavering leaves it inwardly reinforced: he has
become a link in the community.

The National Socialist movement must never forget this and
in particular it must never let itself be influenced by those bour-
geois simpletons who know everything better, but who neverthe-
less have gambled away a great state including their own exist-
ence and the rule of their class. Oh, yes, they are very, very
clever, they know everything, imderstand everything — only one
thing they did not understand, how to prevent the German people
from falling into the arms of Marxism. In this they miserably
and wretchedly failed, so that their present conceit is only
arrogance,^ which in the form of pride, as everyone knows, always
thrives on the same tree as stupidity.

If today these people attribute no special value to the spoken
word, they do so, it must be added, only because, thank the
Lord, they have become thoroughly convinced by now of the
ineffectualness of their own speechmaking.

^ ‘so doss iJtre jetzige Eingebildetheit nur Diinkd ist.‘

C H A P T E B

VII

//

The Struggle with the Red Front

In 1919-20 and also in 1921 I personally
attended bourgeois meetings. They always made the same
impression on me as in my youth the prescribed spoonful of
cod-liver oil. You’ve got to take it, and it’s supposed to be very
good, but it tastes terrible. If the German people were tied
together with cords and pulled forcibly into these bourgeois
‘ demonstrations and the doors were locked tiU the end of the
performance and no one allowed to leave, it might lead to success
in a few centuries. Of course, I must frankly admit that in this
case I should probably lose all interest in life and would rather
not be a German at all. But since, thank the Lord, this cannot
be done, we have no need to be surprised that the healthy, un-
spoiled people avoid ‘bourgeois mass meetings’ as the devil holy
water.

I came to know them, these prophets of a bourgeois philosophy,
and I am really not surprised; I understand why they attribute
no importance to the spoken word. In those days I attended
meetings of the Democrats, the German Nationalists, the
German People’s Party, and also the Bavarian People’s Party
(Bavarian Center). What struck you at once was the homo-
geneous solidity of the audience. It was almost always solely
party members that took part in one of these rallies. The
whole thing was without any discipline, more like a yawning

Bourgeois ‘Mass Meetings’

481

bridge dub than a meeting of the people which had just been
through their greatest revolution.

The speakers did everything they could to preserve this peace-
ful mood. They spoke, or rather, as a rule, they read speeches
in the style of a witty newspaper artide or of a sdentific treatise,
avoided aR strong words, and here and there threw in some feeble
professorial joke, at which the honorable committee dutifully
began to laugh; though not loudly, provocativdy, but in a dig-
nified, subdued, reserved fashion.

And what a committee!

Once I saw a meeting in the Wagner-Saal in Munich; it was a
demonstration on the occasion of the anniversary of the Battle of
Nations at Leipzig. The speech was delivered or read by a dig-
nified old gentleman, a professor at some university. On the
platform sat the committee. To the left a monode, to the right
a monode, and in between one without a monode. All three in
frock coats, so that you got the impression either of a court of
justice planning an execution or of a solemn baptism, in any case
more of a religious solemnity. The so-called speech, which might
have cut a perfectly good figure in print, was simply terrible in
its effect. After only three quarters of an hour the whole meeting
was dozing along in a state of trance, which was interrupted
only by the departure of individual men and women, the datter-
ing of the waitresses, and the 3rawning of more and more numer-
ous listeners. Three workers, who, either from curiosity or
because they had been commissioned to attend, were present at
the meeting, and behind whom I posted myself, looked at each
other from time to time with ill-concealed grins, and finally
nudged one another, whereupon they very quietly left the hall.
You could see that they did not want to disturb the meeting at
any price. And in this company it was really not necessary.
Finally the meeting seemed to be drawing to its end. After the
professor, whose voice had meanwhile grown steadily softer and
softer, had finished his lecture, the chairman of Uie meeting,
sitting between the two monocle-bearers, arose and roared at the
‘German sisters’ and ‘brothers’ present how great his gratitude

482

Mein Kampj

was and how great their feelinp on this order must be for the
unique lecture, as enjoyable as it was thorough and deeply pene-
trating, which Professor X had given them, and which in the
truest sense of the word was an ‘inner experience,’ in fact, an
‘achievement.’ It would be a profanation of this solenm hour to
add a discussion to these lucid remarks; therefore, speaking for
all those present, he would dispense with any such discussion
and instead bid them aU rise from their seats and join in the cry:
‘We are a united people of brothers,’ etc. Finally, to conclude
the meeting he asked us all to sing the Deutschland song.

And then they sang, and it seemed to me that even at the
second verse the voices were becoming somewhat fewer and only
swelled mightily at the refrain, and at the third verse this im-
pression grew stronger, and I believed that not all of them could
have been quite sure of the text.

But what does this matter if such a song rings to the heavens
in all fervor from the heart of a German National soul.

Thereupon the meeting scattered; that is, everyone rushed to
get out quickly, some to their beer, others to a caf6, and still
others into the fresh air.

Yes, indeed, out into the fresh mr, at all costs out. That was
my own one feeling, too. And this was supposed to serve for the
glorification of a heroic struggle on the part of hundreds of
thousands of Prussians and Germans? Phooey, I say, and again
phooey!

The government, of course, may like this kind of thing. Nat-
urally this is a ‘peaceful’ meeting. The minister for law and order
really has no need to fear that the waves of enthusiasm will sud-
denly burst the legal measure of bourgeois propriety; that sud-
denly in a frenzy of enthusiasm, the people will pour forth from
the hall, not to hurry to a caf4 or tavern, but to march through
the streets of the dty in rows of four with measured tread, singing
* Deutschland hoch in Ehren' thus creating unpleasantness for
a police force in need of rest.

No, with such citizens they ran be well pleased.

Suspiciotrs Red Posters

483

By contrast, it must be admitted, the National Socialist meet-
ings were not ‘peaceful’ There the waves of two outlooks
clashed, and they did not end with the insipid rattling off of
some patriotic song, but with a fanatical outburst of folkish and
national passion.

From the very beginning it was important to introduce blind
discipline in our meetings and absolutely to guarantee the author-
ity of the committee in charge. For what we said in our speeches
was not the feeble bilge of a botirgeois ‘speaker,’ but in content
and form was always suited to provoke a reply from our oppo-
nents. And opponents there were in our meetings! How often
they came in dense crowds, individual agitators among them,
and all their faces reflecting the conviction: Today we’ll make an
end of you!

How often, indeed, they were led in, literally in columns, our
Red friends, with exact orders, poured into them in advance,
to smash up the whole show tonight and put an end to the whole
business. And how often it was touch and go, and only the ruth-
less energy of our people in charge and the brutal activism of our
guards was able again and again to thwart the enemy’s purpose.

And they had every reason to feel provoked.

The red color of our posters in itself drew them to our meeting
halls. The run-of-the-mill bourgeoisie were horrified that we had
seized upon the red of the Bolsheviks, and they regarded this as
all very ambiguous. The German national souls kept privately
whispering to each other the suspicion that basically we were
nothing but a species of Marxism, perhaps Marxists, or rather,
socialists in disguise. For to this very day these scatterbrains
have not understood the difference between socialism and Marx-
ism. Especially when they discovered that, as a matter of prin-
ciple, we greeted in our meetings no ‘ladies and gentlemen’ but
only ‘naiional comrades,’ and among ourselves spoke only of
party comrades, the Marxist spook seemed demonstrated for
many of our enemies. How often we shook with laughter at tiiese
simple bourgeois scare-cats, at the sight of their ingenious witty
guessing games about our origin, our intentions, and our goal.

484

Mein Kampe

We chose the red color of our posters after careful and thor-
ough reflection, in order to provoke the Left, to drive them to
indignation and lead them to attend our meetings if only to
break them up, in order to have some chance to speak to the
people.

It was really a treat in those years to follow the perplexity and
helplessness of our adversaries in their perpetually vacillating
tactics. First they called on their adherents to take no notice
of us and to avoid our meetings.

And on the whole this advice was followed.

But since in the course of time individuals came notwithstand-
ing, and this number slowly but steadily increased and the im-
pression made by our doctrine was obvious, the leaders gradually
became nervous and uneasy and became obsessed with the con-
viction that they must not forever stand idly by and watch this
development, but must put an end to it by terror.

Thereupon came appeals to the 'class-conscious proletarians’ to
attend our meetings in masses and strike the representatives of
' monarchistic, reactionary agitation’ with the fists of the pro-
letariat.

AU at once our meetings were filled with workers, three quarters
of an hour in advance. They were like a powder barrel that could
blow up at any moment, with a burning fuse already under it.
But it always turned out differently. The people came in as our
enemies, and when they left, if they were not our supporters, at
' least they had grown thoughtful, indeed critical; they had begun
to examine the soundness of their own doctrine. But gradually
it transpired that after my speech lasting three hours adherents
and adversaries fused into a single enthusiastic mass. Then any
signal to smash up the meeting was in vain. Then the leaders
really began to be afraid, and they turned back to those who
had previously come out against this tactic and who now, with a
certain semblance of justification, emphasized their opinion that
the only correct method was to forbid the workers to attend our
meeting on principle.

Then they stopped coming, or at least there were fewer of

Vacillating Tactics of the Marxists

485

them. But after a short while the whole game began again from
the beginning.

The prohibition was not observed; more and more of the com-
rades came, and again the adherents of the radical tactic were
victorious. Our meetings must be broken up, they decided.

Then, after two, three, or often eight and ten meetings it
turned out that to break up the meetings was easier said than
done, and the result of every single meeting was a crumbling
away of the Red fighting troops. Suddenly the other watchword
was back again; ‘Proletarians, comradesl Avoid the meetings of
the National Socialist agitators!’

And the same, eternally vacillating tactic was found in the
Red press. Sometimes they tried to kill us by silence, then becom-
ing convinced of the uselessness of this effort and again tr3dng
the contrary. Every day we were ‘mentioned’ somewhere, usu-
ally with the intent of making the absolute absurdity of our
whole existence clear to the workers. But after a certain time
the gentlemen could not help but feel that not only did this do
us no harm, but on the contrary benefited us, since naturally
many individuals could not help but ask themselves why so
many words were devoted to this phenomenon if it was absurd.
The people became curious. Then there was a sudden shift,
and they began for a time to treat us as humanity’s biggest crimi-
nals. Article upon article, in which our criminality was explained
and proved again and again, and scandalous stories, even if
puUed out of the air from A to Z, were expected to do the rest.
But after a short time they seem to have convinced themselves
of the inefficacy of these attacks; essentially all this only helped
ready to concentrate the general attention upon us.

At that time I adopted the standpoint: It makes no difference
whatever whether they laugh at us or revile us, whether they
represent us as clowns or criminals; the main thing is that they
mention us, that they concern themselves with us again and
again, and that we gradually in the eyes of the workers them-
selves appear to be the only power that anyone reckons with at
the moment. What we really are and what we ready want, we

486

Mein Kampe

will show the wolves of the Jewish press when the time comes.

One more reason why, as a rule, our meetings were not directly
broken up in those days was the absolutely incredible cowardice
of the leaders of oiu: adversaries. In all critical cases they sent
little rank-and-filers ahead, at most waiting outside for the
results of the disturbances.

We were almost always very well informed with regard to the
intentions of these gentry. Not only because, for reasons of ex-
pediency, we had left many party comrades within the Red
formations, but because the Red wirepullers themselves were
afflicted with a talkativeness which in this case was very useful
to us, and which, unfortunately, is very frequently found among
the German people in general. They couldn’t keep it to them-
selves when they had hatched out such a plan, and as a rule they
began to cackle even before the egg was laid. And so, many and
many a time, we had made the most comprehensive preparations
and the Red shock troops hadn’t so much as a suspicion how
close they were to being thrown out.

The times compelled us to take the defense of our meetings
into our own hands; one can never count on protection on the
part of the authorities; on the contrary, experience shows that
it always and exclusively benefits the disturbers. For the sole
actual result of intervention by the authorities — that is, the
police — was at best to dissolve, in other words, to dose the
meeting. And that was the sole aim and purpose of the hostile
, disturbers.

In this connection the police has developed a practice which
represents the most monstrous form of injustice that can be
conceived of. If through some sort of threats it becomes known
to the authorities that there is danger of a meeting being broken
up, they do not arrest the threateners, but forbid the others, the
innocent, to hold the meeting, and what is more, the run-of-the-
mill police mind is mighty proud of such wisdom. They call this
a ‘precautionary measure for the prevention of an illegal act.’

Thus, the determined gangster is always in a position to make
political activity and efforts impossible for decent people. In the

Psychological Management oe Meetings 487

name of law and order, the state authority gives in to the gangster
and requests the others please not to provoke him. And so if
National Socialists wanted to hold meetings in certain places
and the unions declared that this would lead to resistance on
the part of their members, the police, you may rest assured, did
not put these blackmailing scoundrels behind the bars, but
forbade our meeting. Yes, these organs of the law even had the
incredible shamelessness to inform us of this innumerable times
in writing.

If we wanted to defend ourselves against such eventualities, we
had, therefore, to make sure that any attempt at a disturbance
was forestalled ^ in the bud.

In this connection the following had also to be considered: i4«y
meeting which is protected exclusively by the police discredits its
organizers in the eyes of the broad masses. Meetings which are
guaranteed only by the presence of a large police force do not
attract support, since the presupposition for winning the lower
strata of a people is always a strength that is visibly present.

Just as a courageous man can more easily conquer women’s
hearts than a coward, a heroic movement will sooner win the
heart of a people than a cowardly one which is kept alive only
by police protection.

Especially for this last reason, the young party had to make
sure of defending its own existence, of protecting itself and of
breaking the enemy terror with its own hands.

The protection of meetings was based:

(1) On an energetic and psychologically sound conduct of the
meeting.^

If we National Socialists held a meeting in those days, we were
its masters and no one else. And every minute, uninterruptedly,
we sharply emphasized this master right. Our opponents knew
perfectly well that anyone creating a provocation would be
mercilessly thrown out, even if we were only a dozen among half

‘ ‘sdum in Keim wmdglkh gemacht wwde’

* In the first edition this series concludes ahortiivdy with No. 1. The
second edition inserts: ' (2) pn an Organised monitor troo^.’

488

Mein Kampf

a thousand. In the meetings of those days, especially outside of
Munich, there would be five, six, seven, and eight hundred ad-
versaries to fifteen or sixteen National Socialists. But neverthe-
less we tolerated no provocation, and those who attended our
meetings knew full well that we would rather have let ourselves
be beaten to death than capitulate. And it happened more than
once that a handful of party comrades heroically fought their
way to victory against a roaring, flailing Red majority.

In such cases these fifteen or twenty men would in the end
have assuredly been overcome. But the others knew that previ-
ously at least twice or three times as many of them would have
had their skulls bashed in, and this they did not gladly risk.

Here we tried to learn from the study of Marxist and bourgeois
meeting technique, and learn we did.

The Marxists had always had a blind discipline, so that the
idea of breaking up a Marxist meeting, by the bourgeoisie at
least, could not even arise. But the Reds busied themselves all
the more with such intentions. Gradually they had not only
achieved a certain virtuosity in this field, but ultimately in large
sections of the Reich they went so far as to designate a non-
Marxist meeting as such as a provocation of the proletariat;
especially when the wirepullers sensed that the meeting might
draw up the catalogue of their own sins and unmask the treach-
ery with which they deceived and lied to the people. Then, as
soon as such a meeting was announced, the whole Red press
, raised a furious outcry, and these men who in principle despised
' the law were not seldom the first to turn to the authorities, with
the urgent and threatening request that this ‘provocation of the
proletariat’ be prohibited at once, ‘in order to prevent worse
things from happening.’ They chose their language and achieved
their success according to the dimensions of the official bonehead.
But if, in an exceptional case, there was a real German official in
such a post, not an official toady, and he rejected the shameless
imposition, there followed the well-known summons not to
suffer such a ‘provocation of the proletariat,’ but on such and such
a date to attend the meeting en masse,, and ‘put a stop to the

Bourgeois Meeting Technique

489

disgraceful activity of the bourgeois creatures, with the homy
fist of the proletariat.’

You need to have seen such a boiurgeois meeting, you need to
have seen its leaders in all their miserable fear! Often, upon
such threats, a meeting was simply called off. And always the
fear was so great that instead of eight o’clock the meeting was
seldom opened before a quarter to nine or nine o’clock. The
chairman then endeavored, with twenty-nine compliments, to
make it clear to the ‘gentlemen of the opposition’ present, how
pleased he and all the others present were at heart (a p lain lie!)
with the visit of men who did not yet stand on the same ground,
because after all only mutual discussion (to which he thereby
most solemnly consented in advance) could bring them closer,
arouse mutual understanding, and throw a bridge between them.
And in passing he gave assurance that it was by no means the
purpose of the meeting to turn people away from their previous
views. No, indeed, let each man be happy in his own fashion,
but let him not interfere with the happiness of others; and so he
requested the audience to let the speaker complete his remarks,
which would not be very long anyway, so that this meeting
should not present to the world the shameful spectacle of German
brothers quarreling among themselves . . . Brrr!

But the brethren on the Left usually had no understanding for
this; no, before the speaker had even begun, he had to pack up
his thing s amid the wildest abuse; and not seldom you got the
impression that he was thankful to Fate for quickly cutting off
the painful procedure. Amid a monstrous tumult such bourgeois
meeting-hall toreadors left the arena, except when they flew down
the steps with gashed heads, which was actually often the case.

And so, you may be sure, it was something new to the Marxists
when we National Socialists organized our first meetings, and
especially how we organized them. They came in convinced that,
of course, they would be able to repeat on us the little game they
had so often played. ‘Today we’U finish you off!’ How many a
one boastfully shouted this sentence to another on entering our
meeting, only to find himself outside the hall in the twinkling

490

Mein Kampe

of an eye, even before he could shout his second interruption.

In the first place, the committee in charge was difierent with
us. No one begged the audience graciously to permit our speech,
nor was everyone guaranteed unlimited time for discussion; it
was simply stated that we were the masters of the meeting, that
in consequence we had the privilege of the house, and that any-
one who should dare to utter so much as a single cry of interrup-
tion w^ould be mercilessly thrown out where he came from. That,
furthermore, we must reject any responsibility for such a fellow;
if there was time left and it suited us, we would permit a dis-
cussion to take place, if not, there would be none, and the speaker.
Party Comrade So-and-So, had the floor.

This in itself filled them with amazement.

In the second place, we disposed of a rigidly organized house
guard. In the bourgeois parties this house guard, or rather
monitor service, usually consisted of gentlemen who believed
that the dignity of their years gave them a certain claim to
authority and respect. But since the Marxist-mcited masses did
not have the least regard for age, authority, and respect, the
existence of this bourgeois house guard was for practical puiposes
nullified, so to speak.

At the very beginning of our big meetings, I began the organ-
ization of a house guard in the form of a monitor service, which as
a matter of principle included only young fellows. These were in
part comrades whom I knew from military service; others were
newly won party comrades who from the very outset were in-
structed and trained in the viewpoint that terror can only be
broken by terror; that on this earth success has always gone to
the courageous, determined man; that we are fig h ting for a
mighty idea, so great and noble that it well deserves to be
guarded and protected with the last drop of blood. They were
imbued with the doctrine that, as long as reason was silent and
violence had the last word, the best weapon of defense lay in
attack; and that our monitor troop must be preceded by the
reputation of not being a debating dub, but a combat group
determined to go to any length.

National Socialist Monitor Troop

491

And how this youth had longed for such a slogan!^

How disillusioned and outraged was this front-line^eneration,
how full of disgust and revulsion at bourgeois cowardice and
sMUy-shallying!

Thus, it became fully clear that the revolution had been pos-
sible thanks only to the disastrous bourgeois leadership of our
people. The fists to protect the German people would have been
available even then, but the heads to play the game were lacking.
How many a time the eyes of my lads glittered when I explained
to them the necessity of their mission and assured them over
and over again that all the wisdom on this earth remains with-
out success if force does not enter into its service, g uarding it
and protecting it; that the gentle Goddess of Peace can ■vralk
only by the side of the God of War; and that every great deed
of this peace requires the protection and aid of force. How much
more vividly the idea of military service now dawned on them I
Not in the calcified sense of old, ossified officials serving the dead
authority of a dead state, but in the living consciousness of the
duty to fight for the existence of our people as a whole by sacri-
ficing the life of the individual, always and forever, at all times
and places.

And how these lads did fight!

Like a swarm of hornets they swooped down on the disturbers
of our meetings, without regard for their superior power, no
matter how great it might be, without regard for wounds and
bloody victims, filled entirely with the one great thought of
creating a free path for the holy mission of our movement.

As early as midsummer, 1920, the organization of the monitor
troop gradually assumed definite forms, and in the spring of
1921 little by little divided into himdreds, which themselves in
turn were split up into groups.

And this was urgently necessary, for in the meanwhile our
public meeting activity W steadily increased. Even now, to be
sure, we still often met in the Festsaal of the Munich Hofbrau-
haus, but even more often in the larger halls of the city. The
Festsaal of the Biirgerbjau and the Miinchener Kindl-Kedlear

492

Mein Kampf

saw mightier and mightier mass meetings in the fall and winter
of 1920^21, and the picture was always the same: rallies of the
NSDAP even then usually had to be closed by the police even before
beginning, because of overcrowding.

* * *

The organization of our monitor troop clarified a very im-
portant question. Up till then the movement possessed no party
insignia and no party flag. The absence of such sjmibols not
only had momentary disadvantages, but was intolerable for the
future. The disadvantages consisted above all in the fact that
the party comrades lacked any outward sign of their common
bond, while it was unbearable for the future to dispense with a
sign which possessed the character of a symbol of the movement
and could as such be opposed to the International.

What importance must be attributed to such a symbol from
the psychological point of view I had even in my youth more
than one occasion to recognize and also emotionally to under-
stand. Then, after the War, I experienced a mass demonstration
of the Marxists in front of the Roy 2 il Palace and the Lustgarten.
A sea of red flags, red scarves, and red flowers gave to this demon-
stration, in which an estimated hundred and twenty thousand
persons took part, an aspect that was gigantic from the purely
external point of view. I myself could feel and understand how
easily the man of the people succumbs to the suggestive magic of
a spectacle so grandiose in effect.

The bourgeoisie, which in its party politics neither represents
nor advocates any outlook at all, had therefore no flag of its own.
They consisted of ‘patriots’ and therefore ran aroimd in the
colors of the Reich. If these had been the symbol of a definite
philosophy, it would have been understandable that the owners
of the state viewed its flag as the representative of its philosophy,
since the symbol of their philosophy had beconle the flag of the
state and the^Reich through their own_ activity.

The Old Banner and the New

493

But this was not the case.

The Reich had been formed without any move on the part of
the German bourgeoisie, and the flag itself had been bom from
the womb of war. Hence it was really nothing but a state flag
and possessed no meaning of any sort in the sense of a special
philosophical mission.

Only in one spot of the German language area was anything
like a bourgeois party flag in existence — in German Austria.
By choosing the colors of 1848, black, red, and gold, for its party
s)mibol, a part of the national bourgeoisie in that country had
created a symbol, which, though without any meaning in a phil-
osophical sense, nevertheless had a revolutionary character,
politically speaking. The sharpest enemies of this black, red, and
gold flag were then — and today this should not be forgotten —
the Social Democrats and the Christian Social Party, or Clericals.
It was precisely they who in those days reviled, befouled, and
soiled these colors, just as later, in 1918, they dragged the black,
white, and red into the gutter. At all events, the black, red, and
gold of the German parties of old Austria were the colors of 1848;
that is, of a time which may have been fantastic, but which was
represented by the most honorable individual German souls,
though the Jew stood in the background as the invisible wire-
puller, Therefore, it was high treason and the shameless seUing-
out of the German people and German treasure which made
these flags so agreeable to the Marxists and the Center that
today they honor them as their most sacred possession and create
organizations of their own for the protection of the flag they once
spat upon.

And so, up to 1920, Marxism was actually confronted by no
flag which philosophically would have represented its polar
opposite. For even if the best parties of the German bourgeoisie
after 1918 would no longer consent to take over the suddenly
discovered black, red, and gold flag as their own symbol, they
themselves had no program of their own for the future to oppose
to the new development; at best they had the idea of a recon-
struction of the past Reich.

494

Mein Kampe

And it is to this idea that the black, white, and red banner
of the old Reich owes its resurrection as the flag of our so-called
national bourgeois parties.

li is obnom that the symbol of a state of affairs, which could
he overcotTte by Marxism under conditions and attendant circum-
stances that were anything but glorious, is ill-suited for a symbol
under which to annihilate this same Marxism. Sacred and beloved
as these old and uniquely beautiful colors, in their fresh, youthful
combination, must be to every decent German who has fought under
them and beheld the sacrifice of so many, the flag is worthless as a
symbol for a struggle for the future.

Unlike the bourgeois politicians, I have, in our movement,
always upheld the standpoint that it is a true good fortune for
the German nation to have lost the old flag. What the Republic
does beneath its flag, can remain indifferent to us. But from the
bottom of our hearts we should thank Fate for having been
gracious enough to preserve the most glorious war flag of all
times from being used as a bedsheet for the most shameful prosti-
tution. The present-day Reich, which sells itself and its citizens,
must never be permitted to fly the black, white, and red flag of
honor and heroes.

As long as the November disgrace endures, let it bear its
own outer covering and not try to steal this like everything else
from a more honorable past. Let our bourgeois politicians remind
their conscience that anyone who desires the black, white, and
red flag for this state is burglarizing our past. Truly, the former
flag was suited only to the former Reich, just as, God be praised
and thanked, the Republic chose the one suited to it.

This was also the reason why we National Socialists could have
seen no expressive s)miboi of our own activity in hoisting the old
flag. For we do not desire to awaken from death the old Reich
that perished through its own errors, but to build a new state.

The movement which today fights Marxism with this aim must
therefore bear the s3ninbol uf the new state in its very flag.

The question of the new flag — that is, its appearance — occu-
pied us intensely in those days. From all sides came suggestions.

The National Socialist Flag

495

which for the most part it must be admitted were more well-
intended than successful. For the new flag had to be equally a
symbol of our own struggle, since on the other hand it was ex-
pected also to be highly effective as a poster. Anyone who has
to concern himself much with the masses will recognize these
apparent trifles to be very important matters. An effective
inRignia can in hundreds of thousands of cases give the first
impetus toward interest in a movement.

For this reason we had to reject all suggestions of identif3dng
our movement through a white flag with the old state, or, more
correctly, with those feeble parties whose sole political aim was
the restoration of past conditions, as was proposed by many
quarters. Besides, white is not a stirring color. It is suitable for
chaste virgins’ clubs, but not for world-changing movements in a
revolutionary epoch.

Black was also suggested: in itself suitable for the present
period, it contained nothing, however, that could in any way
be interpreted as a picture of the will of our movement. Finally,
this color has not a stirring enough effect either.

White and blue were out of the question despite their wonder-
ful esthetic effect, for these were the colors of an individual
German state, and of an orientation toward particularistic
narrow-mindedness which unfortunately did not enjoy the best
reputation. Here, too, moreover, it would have been hard to
find any reference to our movement. The same applied to black
and white.

Black, red, and gold were in themselves out of the question.

So were black, white, and red, for reasons already mentioned,
at least in their previous composition. In effect, to be sure, this
color combination stands high above all others. It is the most
brilliant harmony in existence.

I myself always came out for the retention of the old colors,
not only because as a soldier they are to me the holiest thing I
know, but because also in their esthetic effect they are by far the
most compatible with my feeling. Nevertheless, I was obliged to
reject without exception the numerous designs which poured in

496

Mein Kampe

from the drdes of the young movement, and which for the most
part had drawn the swastika into the old flag. I myself — as
Leader — did not want to come out publicly at once with my own
design, since after all it was possible that another should produce
one just as good or perhaps even better. Actually, a dentist from
Stamberg did deliver a design that was not bad at all, and, in-
cidentally, w^ quite dose to my own, having only the one fault
that a swastika with curved legs was composed into a white disk.

I myself, meanwhile, after innumerable attempts, had laid
down a final form; a flag with a red background, a white disk, and
a black swastika in the middle. After long trials I also found a
definite proportion between the size of the flag and the size of the
white disk, as well as the shape and thickness of the swastika.

And this remained final.

Along the same lines arm-bands were immediately ordered for
the monitor detachments, a red band, likewise with the white disk
and black swastika.

The party insignia was also designed along the same lines: a
white disk on a red field, with the swastika in the middle. A
Munich goldsmith by the name of Fiiss furnished the first usable
design, which was kept.

In midsummer of 1920 the new flag came before the public for
the first time. It was excellently suited to our new movement. It
was young and new, like the movement itself. No one had seen it
before; it had the effect of a burning torch. We ourselves experi-
enced an almost childlike joy when a faithful woman party com-
rade for the first time executed the design and delivered the flag.
Only a few months later we had half a dozen of them in Munich,
and the monitor troop, which was growing bigger and bigger,
especially contributed to spreading the new symbol of the move-
ment.

And a symbol it redly isl Not only that the unique colors,
which all of us so passionately love and which once won so much
honor for the German people, attest our veneration for the past;
they were also the best embodiment of the movement’s will. As
National Socialists, we see our program in our flag. In red we see

The National Socialist Symbol

497

the social idea of the movement, in iDhite the nationalistic idea, m
the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory of the
Aryan man, and, by the same token, the victory of the idea of
creative work, which as such always has been and always will be
anti-Semitic.

Two years later, when the monitor troop had long since become
a Sturm-Abteilung (storm section), embracing many thousands of
men, it seemed necessary to give this armed organization a special
symbol of victory; the standard. This, too, I designed myself and
then gave it to a loyal old party comrade, master goldsmith Gahr,
for execution. Since then the standard is amnng the symbols and
battle signs of the National Socialist strug^e.

* * *

Our public meeting activity, which increased more and more in
1920, finally led to the point where we held as many as two meet-
ings in some weeks. People crowded in front of our posters, the
largest halls of the city were always filled, and tens of thousands
of misled Marxists found the way back to their national commu-
nity to become warriors for a free German Reich to come. The
Munich public had come to know us. People spoke of us, the
word ‘National Socialist' became familiar to many and already
meant a program. The host of adherents, and even of members,
began to grow uninterruptedly, so that in the winter of 1920-21
we could already be regarded as a strong party in Munich.

Aside from the Marxist parties there was in those da)^ no
party, above all no national party, which could boast of such mass
demonstrations as ours. The Miinchener-Kindl-Keller, holding
five thousand people, had more than once been filled to the burst-
ing point, and there was only a single hall into which we had not
yet ventured, and this was the Zirkus Krone.

At the end of January, 1921, grave cares arose once more for
Germany. The Paris Agreement, according to which Germany
obligated herselE to pay the insane siun of a hundred billion gold

Mein Kampf

marks, was to be reaJbwd in the form of the London dictate.*

A working federation of so-called folkish leagues, long existing in
Munich, wanted to call a large common protest meeting on this
occasion. Time was pressing, and I myself was nervous in view of
the eternal hesitation and delay in carrying out decisions that
had been taken. First there was talk of a demonstration on the
Konigsplatz, but this was abandoned for fear of being broken up
by the Reds and a protest demonstration in front of the Feldherm-
halle was projected. But this too was abandoned and finally a
common demonstration in the Munchener-Kindl-Keller was sug-
gested. Meanwhile, day after day had passed, the big parties had
taken no notice whatever of the great event, and the action com-
mittee could not make up its mind to set a definite date for the
intended demonstration.

On Tuesday, February 1, 1921, 1 most urgently demanded a
final decision. I was put off till Wednesday. So on Wednesday I
absolutely insisted on dear information when and whether the
demonstration should take place. The answer was again in-
definite and evasive; I was told that they ‘intended’ to call a
demonstration for Wednesday a week.

With this the cord of my patience snapped and I decided to
carry through the protest demonstration alone. On Wednesday
noon I dictated the poster into the typewriter in ten minutes and
at the same time had the Zirkus Krone rented for the following
day, Thursday, February 3.

At that time this was a tremendous venture. Not only that it
seemed questionable whether we could fill the gigantic hnll^ but
we also ran the danger of being broken up.

Our monitor troop was far from being adequate for this colossal

* The Supreme Allied Council met in Paris from January 24 to 30, and
elaborated a plan of reparations payments. Annual payments were to begin
at two billion gold marks a year and gradually increase to ax billions at the
end of eleven years.

The London Conference on Reparations, held from April 29 to May 5
of the same year, sent an ultimatum to Germany demanding one billion gold
marks on penalty of occup}ring the Ruhr. The Germans accepted the terms
and paid the sum by borrowing in London.

The First Meeting in the Circus

499

hall. And I had no proper idea about the kind of procedure pos-
sible in case of an attempt to break the meeting up. At that time
I thought this would be much harder for us in the Circus building
than in a normal hall. Yet, as it later turned out, the truth was
exactly the opposite. Actually, in this gigantic hall, it was easier
to master a troop of disturbers than in small balls where you were
penned in.

Only one thing was certain: any failure could throw us back for
a long time to come. For if we were once successfully broken up, it
would have destroyed our nimbus at one stroke and encouraged
our opponents to attempt again what had once succeeded. This
could have led to a sabotage of our whole further meeting activity,
which would have taken many months and the hardest struggles
to overcome.

We had only one day’s time to put up posters, that was Thurs-
day itself. Unfortunately, it was raining in the morning, and the
fear seemed founded that under such circumstances many people
would prefer to stay home, instead of hurrying through the rain
and snow to a meeting at which there might possibly be murder
and homicide.

Altogether, I suddenly became afraid on Thursday morning
that the haU would not be filled after all (and in this case I would
have been discredited in the eyes of the working federation), so
now I hastily dictated a few leaflets and had them printed for
circulation in the afternoon. They naturally contained an appeal
to attend the meeting.

Two trucks that I had hired were swathed in as much red as
possible, a few of our flags were planted on top of them and each
one was manned with fifteen to twenty party comrades; they re-
ceived the command to drive conscientiously through the streets
of the city and throw off leaflets; in short, to make propaganda
for the mass demonstration in the evening. It was the first time
that trucks had driven through the city with banners and no
Marxists on them. Consequently the bourgeoisie stared open-
mouthed after the red car decked out with fluttering swastika
flags, while in the outer sections numerous denched fists arose

500

Mein Kamfe

whose owners seemed obviously burned up with rage at this
newest ‘provocation of the proletariat.’ For only the Marxists
the right to hold meetings or to drive around in trucks.

At seven that night the Circus was not yet well filled. Every
ten minutes I was notified by phone, and even I was pretty wor-
ried; for at seven or a quarter after, the other halls had usually
been half, in fact, often almost entirely, full. This, however, was
soon explained. I had not reckoned with the gigantic dimensions
of the new hall; a thousand persons made the Hofbrauhaus seem
very well filled, while they were simply swallowed up by the
Zirkus Krone. You could hardly see them. A short time later,
however, more favorable reports came in, and at a quarter to
eight word came that the hall was three-quarters full and that
large crowds were standing outside the box office windows.
Thereupon I set out.

At two minutes past eight I arrived in front of the Circus.
There was still a crowd to be seen in front, partly just curious
people, with many opponents among them who wanted to stay
outside and see what would happen.

As I entered the mighty hall, the same joy seized me as a year
previous in the first meeting at the Munich Hofbrauhaus Fest-
saal. But only after I had pressed my way through the human
walls and reached the lofty platform did I see the success in all
its magnitude. Like a giant shell this hall lay before me, filled
with thousands and thousands of people. Even the ring was
black with people. Over five thousand six hundred tickets had
been sold, and if we included the total number of unemployed, of
poor students and our monitor detachments, there must have been
six and a half thousand persons.

‘Future or Ruin’ was the theme, and my heart rejoiced in the
conviction that down there before me the future lay.

I began to speak, and spoke about two and a half hours; and
my feeling told me after the first half hour that the meeting would
be a great success. Contact with all these thousands of individuals
had been established. After the first hour the applause began to
interrupt me in greater and greater spontaneous outbursts, ebbing

Meeting Upon Meeting

SOI

o£E after two hours into that solemn stillness which I have later
experienced so very often in thi s hall, and which will remain un-
forgettable to every single member of the audience. Then you
could hardly hear more than the breathing of this gigantic mul-
titude, and only when the last word had been spoken did the ap-
plause suddenly roar forth to find its release and conclusion in the
Deidschlaiid song, sung with the highest fervor.

I stayed to watch as the giant hall slowly began to empty and
for nearly twenty minutes an enormous sea of human beings
forced its way through the mighty center exit. Only then did I
myself, overjoyed, leave my place to go home.

Photographs were made of this first meeting in the Zirkus
Krone. They show better than words the magnitude of the
demonstration. Bourgeois papers ran pictures and notices, but
they only mentioned that there had been a ‘national’ demonstra-
tion and with their usual modesty passed over the organizers in
silence.

With this we had for the first time far overstepped the bounds
of an ordinary party of the day. We could no longer be ignored.
And now, lest the impression arise that this successful meeting
was nothing more than fly-by-night, I immediately fixed a second
meeting in the Circus for the coming week, and the success was
the same. Again the gigantic hall was full to the bursting point
with human masses, so that I decided to hold a meeting in the
coming week in the same style for the third time. And for the
third time the giant Circus was packed full of people from top to
bottom.

After this introduction to the year 1921, 1 increased our public
meeting activity in Munich even more. I now switched over to
holding not only one meeting every week, but in some weeks two
mass meetings; in fact, in midsummer and late fall, it was some-
times three. We still met in the Circus and to our satisfaction
noted that all our evenings brought the same success.

The result was a steadily increasing number of adherents to the
movement and a great increase in members.

502

Mein Kampe

Such successes naturally did not leave our enemies inactive.
Always wavering in their tactics, they had alternated between a
policy of terror and one of killing us by silence, and now, as they
themselves were forced to recognize, they could in no way obstruct
the development of the movement with either the one or the
other. And so, with a last exertion, they decided upon an act of
terror that would definitely bar any further public meeting activ-
ity on our part.

As outward occasion for this action they used a highly mysteri-
ous attack upon a deputy in the Bavarian Diet by the name of
Erhard Auer.^ The said Erhard Auer was said to have been shot
at one night by someone. That is, he had not actually been shot,
but an attempt had been made to shoot him. Amazing presence of
mind, as well as the proverbial courage of the Social Democratic
Party leader, had ostensibly not only frustrated the insidious at-
tack, but put the infamous assailants to ignominious flight.
They had fled so hastily and so far that even later the police
could not catch the slightest trace ® of them. This mysterious
occurrence was now used by the organ of the Social Democratic
Party in Munich to agitate against the movement in the most
unrestrained fashion, and among other things to hint with their
customary loose tongue at what must soon follow. Measures had
been taken, they hinted, to keep us from getting out of hand;
proletarian fists would intervene before it was too late.

And a few days later the day of intervention was at hand.

A meeting in the Munich Hofbrauhaus Festsaal, at which
I myself was to speak, had been chosen for the final reckon-
ing.

On November 4, 1921, between six and seven in the evening, I
received the first positive news that the meeting would definitely

* Erhard Auer was leader of the Munich Social Democrats and a member of
the Bavarian Diet. Hitler’s story is accurate to the extent that Auer himself
reported the attempt to murder him and that nothing was ever learned of his
assailants.

® ‘nichl die leiseste Spur eneischen.’

An Attempted Disruption

503

be broken up, and that for this purpose they intended to
send in great masses of workers, especially from a few Red
factories.

It must be laid to an unfortimate accident that we did not get
this information earlier. On the same day we had given up our
venerable old business office in the Stemeckergasse in Munich
and had moved to a new one; that is, we were out of the old one,
but could not yet move into the new one because work was still
going on inside. Since the telephone had already been taken out
of the old one and not yet installed in the new one, a number of
attempts to inform us by telephone of the intended invasion had
been in vain.

The consequence of this was that the meeting itself was pro-
tected only by extremely weak monitor groups. Only a numeri-
cally weak company, comprising about forty-six heads,^ was pres-
ent, and the" alarm apparatus was not yet sufficiently developed to
bring ample reinforcement in the space of an hour in the evening.
Added to this was the fact that such alarmist rumors had come to
our ears innumerable times without anything special happen-
ing. The old saying that announced revolutions usually fail to
take place had up to this time always proved correct in our
experience.

And so, for this reason, too, perhaps everything was not done
which could have been done that day, to counter any attempt to
break up the meeting with the most brutal determination.

Finally, we regarded the Festsaal of the Munich Hofbrauhaus
as most unsuited for an attempt to break up a meeting. We had
been more afraid for the largest halls, especially the Circus. In
this connection this day gave us a valuable lesson. Later we
studied all these questions with a method which I should call
truly scientific and came to results which in part were as incred-
ible as they were interesting and in the ensuing period were of

^The German word I have translated as ‘company' is 'Hundertschaft,'
literally a company of one hundred. The effect in German is somewhat
ludicrous, but not impossible, as it would be in English to say ‘a hundred
comprising about forty-six heads.’

504

Mein Kampf

basic importance for the organizational and tactical leadership of
our storm troops.

When I entered the vestibule of the Hofbrauhaus at a quarter of
eight, there could indeed be no doubt with regard to the existing
intention. The room was overcrowded and had therefore been
closed by the police. Our enemies who had appeared very early
were for the most part in the hall, and our supporters for the
most part outside. The small S.A. awaited me in the vestibule. I
had the doors to the large haU closed and then ordered the forty-
five or forty-six men to line up. I made it clear to the lads that
today probably for the first time they would have to show them-
selves loyal to the movement through thick and thin, and that not
a man of us must leave the hall unless we were carried out dead; I
myself would remain in the hall, and I did not believe that a single
one of them would desert me; but if I should see anyone playing
the coward, I myself would personally tear off his arm-band and
take away his insignia. Then I called upon them to advance im-
mediately at the slightest attempt to break up the meeting, and
to bear in mind that the best defense lies in your own offensive.

The answer was a threefold Hdl that sounded rougher and
hoarser than usual.

Then I went into the hall and surveyed the situation with my
own eyes. They were sitting in there, tight-packed, and tried to
stab me with their very eyes. Innumerable faces were turned
toward me with sullen hatred, while again others, with mocking
grimaces, let out cries capable of no two interpretations. Today
they would 'make an end of us,’ we should look out for our guts,
they would stop our mouths for good, and all the rest of these
lovely phrases. They were conscious of their superior power and
felt accordingly.

Nevertheless, the meeting could be opened and I began to
speak. In the Festsaal of the Hofbrauhaus I always stood on one
of the long sides of the haU and my platform was a beer table.
And so I was actually in the midst of the people. Perhaps this
circumstance contributed to creating in this haH a mood such as I
have never found an3w?here else.

An Attempted Disruption

505

In front of me, especially to the left of me, only enemies were
sitting and standing. They were all robust men and young fellows,
in large part from the Maffei factory, from Kustermaim’s, from
the Isaria Meter Works, etc. Along the left wall they had pushed
ahead close to my table and were beginning to collect beer mugs;
that is, they kept ordering beer and putting the empty mugs under
the table. In this way, whole batteries grew up and it would have
surprised me if aU had ended well this time.

After about an hour and a half — I was able to talk that long
despite interruptions — it seemed almost as if I was going to be
master of the situation. The leaders of the invading troops
seemed to feel this themselves; for they were becoming more and
more restless, they often went out, came in again, and talked to
their men with visible nervousness.

A small psychological mistake I committed in warding ofi
an interruption, and which I myself realized no sooner had I
let the word out of my mouth, gave the signal for them to start
in.

A few angry shouts and a man suddenly jumped on a chair and
roared into the haU; ‘Freiheitr ^ (Freedom.) At which signal the
fighters for freedom began their work.

In a few seconds the whole hall was filled with a roaring,
screaming crowd, over which, like howitzer shells, flew innumer-
able beer mugs, and in between the cracking of chair-legs, the
crashing of the mugs, bawling, howling, and screaming.

It was an idiotic spectacle.

I remained standing in my place and was able to observe how
thoroughly my boys fulfilled their duty.

I should have liked to see a bourgeois meeting under such cir-
cumstances.

The dance had not yet begim when my storm troopers — for so
they were called from this day on — attacked. Like wolves they
flung themselves in packs of eight or ten again and again on their
enemies, and little by little actually began to thrash them out of
the hall. After only five minutes I hardly saw a one of them who

* Greeting and slogan of the German Social Democrats.

506

Mein Kampf

was not covered with blood. How many of them I only came
really to know on that day; at the head my good Maurice/ my
present private secretary Hess, and many others, who, even
though gravely injured themselves, attacked again and again as
long as their legs would hold them. For twenty minutes the hellish
tumult lasted, but then our enemies, who must have numbered
seven and eight hundred men, had for the most part been beaten
out of the hall and chased down the stairs by my men numbering
not even fifty. Only in the left rear corner of the hall a big group
stood its ground and offered embittered resistance. Thai sud-
denly tv/o shots were fired from the hall entrance toward the plat-
form, and wild shooting started. Your heart almost rejoiced at
such a revival of old war experiences.

Who was shooting could not be distinguished from that point
on; only one thing could be definitely established, that from this
point on the fury of my bleeding boys exceeded all bounds and
finally the last disturbers were overcome and driven out of the hall.

About twenty-five minutes had passed; the hall looked almost
as if a shell had struck it. Many of my supporters were being
bandaged; others had to be driven away, but we had remained
masters of the situation. Hermann Esser, who had assumed the
chair this evening, declared -.‘The meeting goes on. The speaker has
the floor.' And then I spoke again.

After we ourselves had closed the meeting, an excited police
lieutenant came dashing in, and, wildly swinging his arms, he
cackled into the hall: ‘The meeting is dismissed.’

Involuntarily I had to laugh at this late-comer; real police
pompousness. The smaller they are, the bigger they have to try
and look at least.®

^ Emil Maurice. By trade a watchmaker. An eariy associate of Hitler and
first leader of the storm troops. He was in prison with Hitler in Landsbetg
after the Putsch, and Hitler first dictated Mein Kampf to him. After the
National Socialists seized power, he became a municipal councilor in Munich.
He was active in the blood purge killings of 1934.

* Persons residing in Munich at the time report that the Social Democrats
were expelled from the meeting by the police.

‘The Meeting Goes On’

507

That night we had really learned a good deal and our enemies
never again forgot the lesson they for their part had received.

After that the MUnchener Post threatened us with no more fists
of the proletariat up to the autumn of 1923.

CHAPTER

VIII

The Strong Man Is Mightiest Alone*

In the above I have already mentioned the
existence of a Working Federation of German Folkish Associations,
and in this place would like to discuss very briefly the problem of
these working federations.

In general we understand by a working federation a group of
associations which for the facilitation of their work enter into a
certain mutual relationship, choose a common leadership of
greater or lesser competence, and proceed to carry out common
actions. From this alone it results that we must be dealing with
dubs, associations, or parties whose aims and methods do not lie
too far apart. It is daimed that this is always the case. For the
usual average citizen it is equally pleasant and comforting to hear
that such associations, by combining in such a ‘working federa-
tion,’ have discovered a ‘common bond’ and ‘set aside all dividing
factors.’ Here the general conviction prevails that such a unifica-
tion brings an enormous increase in strength, and that the other-
wise weak little groups have thereby suddenly become a power.

This, however, is usually false.

It is interesting and in my eyes important for the better under-
standing of this question to attain darity as to how associations,
dubs, and the like can arise which all daim to pursue the samp
goal. In the nature of things, it would after all be logical that one
goal should be advocated by only one association, and that, rea-

^ Familiar quotation from Schiller’s Wilhdm Tell, Act I, Scene III.

Right or Priority

509

sonably speating, several associations should not pursue the
same goal. Without doubt that goal had first been envisaged by
one association. One man somewhere proclaims a truth and forms
a movement which is intended to serve the realization of his pur-
pose.

Thus, an association or a party is founded which, according to
its program, should either bring about the elimination of existing
evils or the achievement of a particular state of affairs in the
future.

Once such a movement has been called to life, it possesses a
certain practical right of priority. It should really be obvious that
all men who mean to fight for the same goal should join into such
a movement and thereby add to its strength, thus better to serve
the common purpose. Especially every active mind must feel that
the premise for any real success in the common struggle lies in
such a coordination. Therefore, reasonably, and presupposing a
certain honesty (much depends on this, as I shall later demon-
strate), there should be only one movement for one goal.

That this is not the case can be attributed to two causes. One
of these 1 might designate as almost tragic, while the second is
miserable and to be sought in human weakness itself. But most
fundamentally, I see in both only facts which are suited to en-
hancing the will as such, its energy and intensity, and, through
this higher cultivation of human energy, ultimately to make pos-
sible a solution of the problem in question.

The tragic reason why in the solution of a single task we usually
do not content ourselves with a single association is the following:
Every deed in the grand manner on this earth will in general be
the fulfillment of a desire which had long since been present in
millions of people, a longing silently harbored by many. Yes, it
can come about that centuries wish and yearn for the solution of a
certain question, because they are sighing beneath the intolerable
burden of an existing condition and the fulfillment of this general
long in g does not materialize. Nations which no longer find any
heroic solution for such distress can be designated as impotent,
while we see the vitality of a people, and the predestination for

510

Mein Kampf

life guaranteed by this vitalily, most strikingly demonstrated
when, for a people’s liberation from a great oppression, or for the
elimination of a bitter distress, or for the satisfaction of its soul,
restless because it has grown insecure — Fate some day bestows
upon it the man endowed for this purpose, who finally brings the
long yeamed-for fulfillment.

Now it liesientirely in the essence of so-called great questions of
the day that thousands are active in their solution, that many feel
called, indeed, that Fate itself puts forward many for selection,
and then ultimately, in the free play of forces, gives victory to the
stronger and more competent, entrusting him with the solution
of the problem.

Thus, it may be that centuries, dissatisfied with the form of
their reli^ous life, yearn for a renewal, and that from this psychic
urge dozens and more men arise who on the basis of their insight
and their knowledge believe themselves chosen to solve this
religious distress, to manifest themselves as prophets of a new
doctrine, or at least as warriors against an existing one.

Here, too, assuredly, by virtue of a natural order, the strongest
man is destined to fulfill the great mission; yet the realization that
this one is the exclusively elect usually comes to the others very
late. On the contrary, they all see themselves as chosen and
having equal rights for the solution of the task, and their fellow
men are usually able least of all to distinguish which among them
— being solely endowed with the highest ability — deserves their
sole support.

Thus, in the course of centuries, often indeed within the same
period, different men appear and found movements to fight for
goals which, allegedly at least, are the same or at least are felt to
be the same by the great masses. The common people themselves
harbor indefinite desires and have general convictions, but cannot
obtain precise clarity regarding the actual nature of their aim or of
their own desire, let alone the possibility of its fulfillment.

The tragedy lies in the fact that these men strive for the same
goal in entirely different ways, without knowing one another,
and hence, with the highest faith in their own mission, consider

Struggle for Leadership

511

themselves obligated to go their own ways without consideration
for others.

The fact that such movements, parties, religious groups, arise
entirely independent of one another, solely from the general will
of the times to act in the same direction, is what, at least at first
sight, seems tragic, because people incline too much to the opinion
that the forces scattered among the different ways, i:ould, if con-
centrated upon a single one, lead more quickly and surely to suc-
cess. This, however, is not the case. For Nature itself in its in-
exorable logic makes the decision, by causing the different groups
to enter into competition with one another and struggle for the
palm of victory, and leads that movement to the goal which has
chosen the clearest, shortest, and surest way.

But how should the correctness or incorrectness of a road be
determined from outside unless free course is given to the play of
forces, unless the idtimate decision is withdrawn from the doctri-
naire opinion of human know-it-alls and entrusted to the infallible
logic of visible success, which in the end will always render the
ultimate confirmation of an action’s correctness!

And so if different groups march toward the same goal on
separate paths, once they have become aware of the existence of
similar efforts, they will more thoroughly examine the nature of
their own way; where possible they will shorten it, and by stretch-
ing their energy to the utmost will strive to reach the goal more
quickly.

This competition helps to cultivate the individual fighter, and
mankind often owes its successes in part to the doctrines that
have been derived from the ill fate of previous unsuccessful efforts.

And so, in the fact of an incipient scattering of forces, which
arose through no conscious fault of individuals and at first sight
seemed tragic, we can recognize the means through which in the
end the best method was achieved.

We see in history that in the opinion of most people the two
roads which it was once possible to take for the solution of the
German question and whose chief representatives and champions
were Austria and Prussia, Habsburg and Hohenzollem, should

512

Mein Kampf

have been joined together from the start; in their view, people
should have entrusted themselves with united strength to the one
or the other road. And then the road of the representative who in
the end proved more significant would have been taken; the
Austrian intention, however, would never have led to a German
Reich.

And then the Reich of strongest German unity arose from the very
thing which millions of Germans with bleeding heart felt U) be the
ultimate and most terrible sign of our fratricidal quarrel: the German
imperial throne was in truth won on the field of Kimiggratz and not in
the battles outside Paris as people afterwards came to think.

And thus the founding of the German Reich as such was not the
result of any common will along common paths, but the result of a
conscious and sometimes unconscious struggle for hegemony, from
which struggle Prussia ultimately issued victorious. And any-
one who is not blinded by party politics into renouncing the
truth, wiU have to confirm that so-called hmnan wisdom would
never have made the same wise decision which the wisdom of life,
that is, the free play of forces, finally turned into reality. For
who in German territories two hundred years ago would seriously
have believed that the Prussia of the HohenzoUems would some
day become the germ cell, founder, and mentor of the new German
Reich, and not the Habsburgs? And who, on the other hand,
would deny today that Destiny acted more wisely in this respect;
in fact, who today could even conceive of a German Reich based
on the principles of a rotten and degenerate dynasty?

No, the natural development, though after a struggle enduring
centuries, finally brought the best man to the place where he be-
longed.

This will always be so and will eternally remain so, as it always
has been so.

Therefore, it must not be lamented if so many men set out on
the road to arrive at the same goal: the most powerful and swiftest
will in this way be recognized, and will be the victor.

Now there is a second reason why often in the life of nations
movements of apparently the same nature nevertheless try to

Causes of ‘Folkish Splintering’

513

reach the same goal in different ways. This cause not only is not
tragic, but is positively miserable. It lies in the sorry mixture of
envy, jealousy, ambition, and thievish mentality which imfortu-
nately we sometimes find combined in individual specimens of
mankind.

For as soon as a man appears who profoundly recognizes the
distress of his people and then, after he has attained the ultimate
clarity with regard to the nature of the disease, seriously tries to
cure it, when he has set a goal and chosen the road that can lead
to this goal — iiTunediately small and petty minds take notice
and begin to foUow eagerly the activity of this man who has at-
tracted the public eye. These people are just like sparrows who,
apparently uninterested, but in reality most attentive, keep
watching a more fortunate comrade who has found a piece of
bread, in hopes of suddenly robbing him in an unguarded moment.
A man need only embark upon a new road and all sorts of lazy
loiterers prick up their ears and sniff some worth-while morsel
which might lie at the end of this road. Then, as soon as they
have found out where it may be, they eagerly start out in order to
reach the goal by some other road, if possible a shorter one.

So if a new movement has been founded and has received its
definite program, those people come and claim to be fighting for
the same goal; but, rest assured, not by honestly joining the ranks
of such a movement and thus recognizing its priority; no, they
steal the program and base a new party of their own upon it.
With all this, they are shameless enough to assure their thought-
less feUow men that they had desired the same as the other move-
ment long before, and not seldom they thus succeed in placing
themselves in a favorable light, instead of winning universal con-
tempt as they deserve. For is it not a tremendous gall to aspire to
write on their own banner the task that another has written on
his, to borrow his programmatical principles, and then, as though
he had created all this, to go his own ways? And the gall is espe-
cially manifested in the fact that the same dements who have
caused the split by founding their new movements ao the most
talking, as experience shows, about the need of unification and

514

Mein Kampf

unity as soon as they think they have observed that the opponent
has too much of a headstart to be overtaken.

The so-called ‘folkish splintering’ is due to such a process.

To be sure, the foundation in 1918-19 of a considerable number
of groups, parties, etc., designated as folkish, occurred through
the natural development of things through no fault of the found-
ers. From aJLthese the NSDAP had slowly crystallized out as the
victor by 1920. The basic honesty of those individual founders
could be proved by nothing more splendidly than by the truly
admirable decision taken by many to sacrifice their own obviously
less successful movements to the stronger one; that is, to disband
them or fuse them unconditionally.

This applies especially to the chief fighter of the German-
Socialist Party {Deutsch-SoziaMstische Partei) of those days in
Nuremberg, Julius Streicher.^ The NSDAP and the DSP had
arisen with the same ultimate aims, yet absolutely independently
of one another. The main fighter for the DSP, as I have said, was
Julius Streicher, then a teacher in Nuremberg. At first he, too,
had a holy conviction of the mission and the future of his move-
ment. But as soon as he could recognize the greater power and
superior growth of the NSDAP dearly and beyond aU doubt, he
ceased his activity for the DSP and the Working Federation, and
called on his adherents to join the NSDAP, which had issued
victoriously from the mutual struggle, and to fight on in its ranks
for the common goal. A dedsion as grave from the personal point
of view as it was profoundly decent.

And no form of split has remained from this first period of the
movement; the honorable intention of the men of those days led
almost entirdy to an honorable, straight, and correct condusion.

'Julius Streicher, Gauleiter of Nuremberg and publisher of the anti-
Semitic paper Der StUrmer, devoted chiefly to pornographic exposures of
sexual relations between Jews and Aryans, retained until the Second War a
local independence enjoyed by no other party leader. His fusion with Hitler
was not as peaceable as Hitler makes it

In 1921, Streicher tried to wrest the party leadership from Hitler, but
failed because of a revolt in the ranks of his own Nuremberg supporters.

‘Working Federations’

SIS

What we designate today as ‘folkish splintering’ owes its exist-
ence, as we have already emphasized, exclusively to the second of
the two causes I have cited: ambitious men who previously had
no ideas, much less goals of their own, felt themselves ‘called’ at
the very moment in which they saw the success of the NSDAP
undeniably maturing.

Suddenly programs arose which from start to finish were copied
from ours, ideas were put forward which had been liorrowed from
us, aims set up for which we had fought for years, roads chosen
which the NSDAP had long traveled. By every possible means
they sought to explain why they had been forced to found these
movements despite the NSDAP which had long been in existence;
but the nobler the alleged motives, the falser were their phrases.

In truth a single reason had been determining: the personal ambi-
tion of the founders to play a role to which their own dwarfish figure
realty brought nothing except a great boldness in taking over the ideas
of others, a boldness which elsewhere in civil life is ordinarily desig-
nated as crooked.

There was no conception or idea belonging to other people,
which one of these politick kleptomaniacs did not rapidly collect
for his own business. And those who did this were the same people
who later with tears in their eyes profoundly bemoaned the
‘folkish splintering’ and spoke incessantly of the ‘need for unity,’
in the secret hope that in the end they would so outwit the others
that, weary of the eternal accusing clamor, they would, in addition
to the stolen ideas, toss the movements created for their execution
to the thieves.

But if this proved imsuccessful, and if, thanks to the small in-
tellectual dimensions of their owners, the new enterprises did not
prove as profitable as they had hoped, they usually reduced their
prices and considered themselves happy if they could land in one
of the so-called working federations.

Everyone who at that time could not stand on his own feet
joined in such working federations; no doubt proceeding from the
belief that eight cripples joining arms are sure to produce one
gladiator.

516

Mein Kaupf

And if there were really one healthy man among the cripples, he
used up all his strength just to keep the others on their feet, and
in this way was himself crippled.

We have always regarded fusion in so-called working federa-
tions as a question of tactics; but in this we must never depart
from the following basic realization:

By the formation of a working federation weak organizations are
never transformed into strong ones, but a strong organization can and
will not seldom be weakened. The opinion that a power factor must
result from an association of weak groups is incorrect, since the
majority in any form whatsoever and under all presuppositions wUl,
as experience shows, be the representative of stupidity and cowardice,
and therefore any multiplicity of organizations, as soon as it is
directed by a self -chosen mulHple leadership, is sacrificed to cowardice
and weakness. Also, by such a fusion, the free play of forces is
thwarted, the struggle for the selection of the best is stopped, and hatce
the necessary and ultimate victory of the healthier and stronger pre-
vented forever. Therefore, such fusions are enemies of natural
development, for usually they hinder the solution of the problem
being fought for, far more than they advance it.

It can occur that from purely tactical considerations the top
leadership of a movement which looks into the future neverthe-
less enters into an agreement with such associations for a short
time as regards the treatment of definite questions and perhaps
undertakes steps in common. But this must never lead to the
perpetuation of such a state of affairs, unless the movement
itself wants to renounce its redeeming mission. For once it has
become definitely involved in such a union, it loses the possibility
and also the right of letting its own strength work itself out to the
full and thus overcome its rivals and victoriously achieve the goal
it has set itself.

It must never be forgotten thai nothing that is really great in this
world has ever been achieved by coalitions, but that it has always been
the stuxess of a single victor. Coalition successes bear by the very
nature of their origin the germ of future crumbling, in fact of the loss
of what has already been achieved. Great, truly world-shaking revolu-

‘Working Federations’

517

tions of a spiritual nature are not even conceivable and realizable ex-
cept as the titanic struggles of individual formations, never as enter-
prises of coalitions.

And thus thefolkish state above all will never he created hy the com-
promising will of afolkish working federation, hut solely by the iron
will of a single movement that has fought its way to the top against all.

CHAPTER

IX

Basic Ideas Regarding the Meaning and
Organization oi the SA

T HE STRENGTH of the old State rested on
three pillars: the monarchistic state form, the civil service, and
the army. The revolution of 1918 eliminated the state form, dis-
integrated the army, and delivered the civil service to party
corruption. Thus the most essential pillars of a so-called state
authority were shattered. State authority as such rests almost
always on the three elements which lie at the basis of all author-
ity.

The first foundation for the creation of authority is always
provided by popularity. But an authority which rests solely on
this foundation is stiU extremely weak, uncertain, and shaky.
Every bearer of such an authority based purely on popularity
must, therefore, endeavor to improve and secure the foundation
of this authority by the creation of power. In power, Uierefore, in
force, we see the second foundation of all authority. It is already
considerably more stable and secure, but by no means always
stronger than the first. If popularity and force are combined, and
if in common they are able to survive for a certain time, an authority
on an eoen firmer basis can arise, the authority of tradition. If
finally, popularity, force, and tradition combine, an authority may
be regarded as unshakable.

Through the revolution this last case was completely excluded.
Indeed, there is no longer even an authority of tradition. With
the collapse of the old- Reich, the ehnunation of the old state

The Three Foundations of Authority

S19

form, the destruction of the former sovereign emblems and sym-
bols of the Reich, tradition was abruptly broken off. The conse-
quence of this was the gravest shaking of state authority.

Even the second piUar of state authority, force, was no longer
present. In order to carry out the revolution in the first place, it
was necessary to disintegrate the embodiment of the organized
force and power of the state, the army; indeed, it was necessary
to use the infected parts of the army itself as revolutionary fight-
ing elements. Even though the front-line armies had not suc-
cumbed to this disintegration in a uniform degree, they, never-
theless, the more they felt the glorious sites of their four and a
half years cf heroic struggle behind them, were corroded more and
more by the homeland’s acid of disorganization, and, arrived in
the demobilization organizations, likewise ended up in the confu-
sion of so-called voluntary obedience belonging to the epoch of the
soldiers’ councils.

Naturally no authority could be based on these mutinous bands
of soldiers, who conceived of military service in terms of the
eight-hour day. And thus the second element, the element which
guarantees the firmness of authority, was also eliminated and the
revolution now possessed only the original element, popularity, on
which to build its authority. But this particular basis was ex-
tremely uncertain. To be sure, the revolution succeeded in shat-
tering the old state structure with one mighty blow, but at bot-
tom only because the normal balance within the structure of our
people had already been eliminated by the war.

Every national body can be divided into three great classes:
into an extreme of the best humanity on the one hand, good in
the sense of possessing all virtues, especially distinguished by
courage and self-sacrifice; on the other hand, an extreme of the
worst human scum, bad in the sense that all selfish urges and vices
are present. Between the two extremes there lies a third dass,
the great, broad, middle stratum, in which neither brilliant hero-
ism nor the basest criminal mentality is embodied.

Times when a nation is rising are distinguished, in fad exist
only, by the absolute leadership of the extreme best part.

520

Mein Kaupf

Times of a normal, even development or of a stable state of affairs
are distinguished and exist by the obvious domination of the elements
of the middle, in which the two extremes mutually balance one an-
other, Of cancel one another.

Times when a nation is collapsing are determined by the dominant
activity of the worst elements.

In this coimection it is noteworthy that the broad masses, the
plans of the middle as I shall designate them, only manifest them-
selves perceptibly when the two extremes are locked in mutual
struggle, but that in case of the victory of one of the extremes,
they complaisantly submit to the victor. In case the best people
dominate, the broad masses will follow them; in case the worst
element rises up, they will at least offer them no resistance; for
the masses of the middle themselves will never fight.

Now the war, with its four and a half years of bloody events,
disturbed the inner balance of these three classes, in so far as —
though recognizing all the sacrifices and victims of the middle —
we must nevertheless recognize that it drained the extreme of the
best humanity almost entirely of its blood. For the amount of
irreplaceable German heroes’ blood that was shed in these four
and a half years was really enormous. Just sum up all the hun-
dreds of thousands of individual cases in which again and again
the watchword was: volunteers to the front, volunteer patrols,
volunteer dispatch carriers, volunteers for telephone squads, volun-
teers for bridge crossings, volunteers for U-boats, volunteeers for
airplanes, volunteers for storm battalions, etc. — again and again
through four and a hsdf years, on thousands of occasions, volun-
teers and more volimteers — and always you see the same result:
the beardless youth or the mature man, both filled with fervent
love of their fatherland, with great personal courage or the highest
consciousness of duty, they stepped forward. Tens of tbm isands,
yes, hundreds of thousands of such cases occurred, and gradually
this human element became sparser and sparser. Those who did
not fall were either shot to pieces and crippled, or they gradually
crumbled away as a result of their small r emaini ng number.
Consider above all that the year 1914 set up whole armies of so-

Survival of the Inferior

521

called volunteers who, thanks to the criminal unscrupulousness
of our parliamentary good-for-nothings, had received no ade-
quate peacetime training, and thus became helpless cannon fod-
der at the mercy of the enemy. The four hundred thousand who
then feU or were maimed in the battles of Flanders could not be
replaced. Their loss was more than the loss of a mere number.
By their loss the scale, too lightly weighted on the good side, shot
upward, and the elements of baseness, treachery, cowardice, in
short, the mass of the bad extreme, weighed more heavily than
before.

For one more factor was added:

Not only that the extreme of the best had been most fright-
fully thinned on the battlefields in the course of the four and a
half years, but the bad extreme had meanwhile preserved itself
in the most miraculous way. For every hero who had volunteered
and mounted the steps of Valhalla after a heroic death, you can
be sure there was a slacker who had cautiously turned his back on
death, in order to engage in more or less useful activity at home.

And so the end of the War gives us the following picture: The
middle broad stratiun of the nation has given its measure of blood
sacrifices; the extreme of the best, with exemplary heroism, has
sacrified itself almost completely; the extreme of the bad, sup-
ported by the most senseless laws on the one hand and by the
non-application of the Articles of War on the other hand, has un-
fortunately been preserved almost as completely.

This well-preserved scum of our people then made the revo-
lution and w£is able to make it only because no longer opposed by
the extreme of the best elements: — they were no longer among
the living.

This, however, made the German revolution only a relatively
popular afiair from the start. It was not the German people as
such that committed this act of Cain, but its deserters, pimps, and
other rabble that shun the light.

The man at the front welcomed the end of the bloody struggle; ’
he was glad to ^tum home again, to see his wife and children.
But with the revolution itself he had at heart nothing in common;

522

Mein Kampe

he did not love it, and even less did he love its instigators and
organizers. In the four and a half years of hardest struggle he
had forgotten the party hyenas, and aU their quarrels had grown
alien to him.

Only with a smaU part of the German people had the revolution
really been popular: among that class of its helpers who had
chosen the knapsack ^ as the badge of recognition of all honorable
citizens of this new state. They did not love revolution for its
own sake, as some people erroneously still believe today, but be-
cause of its consequences.

In truth, these Marxist gangsters could hardly base an author-
ity on popularity for any length of time. And yet precisely the
young Republic needed authority at any price, if after a brief
chaos it did not want to be suddenly devoured by a force of re-
tribution gathering from the last elements of the good part of our
people.

There was nothing they more feared, those champions of the re-
volution, than to lose all foothold in the whirlpool of their own
confusion, and suddenly to be seized by an iron fist, such as more
than once in such periods has grown out of the life of peoples, and
have the ground shifted under them. The Republic had to con-
solidate itself at any price.

And so it was compelled almost instantaneously to create, by
the side of the tottering pillar of its weak popularity, an organiza-
tion of force, in order to base a firmer authority upon it.

When in the days of December, January, February of 1918-19
the matadors of the revolution felt the ground trembling beneath
their feet, they looked around for men who would be ready to
strengthen the weak position which the love of their people of-
fered them, by the force of arms. The ‘anti-militaristic’ Republic
needed soldiers. But since the first and sole support of their state
authority — popularity — rooted only in the society of pimps,
thieves, burglars, deserters, slackers, etc., in other words, in that
part of the people which we must designate as the bad extreme —
every effort to recruit men who were prepared to sacrifice their

* See page 437, note.

The Rise of the Free Corps

523

own lives in the service of the new ideal in these circles, was
love’s labor lost. The class supporting the reoolutionary idea
and carrying out the revolution was neither able nor willing to pro-
vide the soldiers for its protection. For this class by no means
wanted the organization of a repid)lican state body, but the disorgan-
ization of the existing state body for the better satisfaction of their in-
stincts. Their watchword was not: order and building up of the Ger-
man Republic^ but: pillage it.

And so the cry for help which the representatives of the people
let out in their agony of fear inevitably went unheard; on the con-
trary, in fact, it aroused resistance and bitterness. For in such an
undertaking people felt a breach of loyalty and faith; in the for-
mation of an authority based no longer solely on their popularity
but supported by force, they sensed the beginning of the struggle
against the one aspect of the revolution that was essential for
these elements: against the right to rob and the undisciplined
rule of a horde of thieves and plunderers who had broken out of
the prison walls and been freed of their chains, in short, of foul
rabble.

The representatives of the people could cry as much as they
liked; no one stepped forward from their ranks, and only the
answering cry, ‘traitor,’ informed them of the state of mind of
those supporters of their popularity.

Then for the first time numerous young Germans once again
stood ready to button up their soldier’s tunics, to shoulder car-
bine and rifle, and don their steel helmets in the service of ‘law
and order’ as they thought, to oppose the destroyers of their
homes. Aj volunteer soldiers they banded into free corps and began,
though grimly hating the revolution, to protect, and thus for practical
purposes to secure, this same revolution.

This they did in the best good faith.

The real organizer of the revolution and its actual wirepuller,
the international Jew, had correctly estimated the situation.
The German people was not yet ripe for being forced into the
bloody Bolshevistic morass, as had happened in Russia. This was
due in large part to the ^eater racial unity that still existed be-

524

Mein Kampf

tween the German intelligentsia and the German manual worker.
Further in the great permeation of even the broadest strata of the
people with educated elements, such as prevailed only in the other
countries of Western Europe, but was totally lacking in Russia.
There the intelligentsia itself was in large part not of Russian
nationality or at least was of non-Slavic racial character. The
thin intellectual upper stratum of the Russia of that time could
at any time be removed, due to the total lack of connecting inter-
mediary ingredients with the mass of the great people. And the
intellectual and moral level of these last was horribly low.

Once it was possible in Russia to incite the uneducated hordes
of the great masses, unable to read or write, against the thin intel-
lectual upper crust that stood in no relation or connection to thpTn,
the fate of the coimtry was dedded, the revolution had succeeded;
the Russian illiterate had thus become the defenseless slave of his
Jevdsh dictators, who for their part, it must be admitted, were
clever enough to let this dictatorship ride on the phrase of ‘peo-
ple’s dictatorship.’

In Germany there was the following additional factor: As cer-
tainly as the revolution could succeed only in consequence of the
gradual disintegration of the army, just as certainly the real
maker of the revolution and disintegrator of the army was not the
soldier at the front, but the more or less light-shy rabble which
either hung around the home garrisons or, supposedly ‘indis-
pensable,’ were in the economic service somewhere. This army
was strengthened by tens of thousands of deserters, who were
able to turn their backs on the front without special risk. The
real coward at all times naturally shuns nothing so much as
death. And at the front, day after day, he faced death in thou-
sands of different forms. If you wont to hold weak, wovering or
actually cowardly fellows to their duty, there has at all times been
only one possibility: The deserter must know that his desertion brings
with it the very thing that he wants to escape. At the front a man can
dte, as a deserter he must die. Only by such a'Draconic threat
against any attempt at desertion can a deterring effect be ob-
tained, not only for the individual, but for the whole army.

Deserters and Revolution

525

And here lay the meaning and purpose of the Articles of War.

It was lovely to believe that the great fight for the existence
of a people could be fought on the sole basis of voluntary loyalty
bom out of and preserved by the realization of necessity. Volim-
tary fulfillment of duty has always determined the best men in
their actions; but not the average. Therefore, such laws are neces-
sary, as for example those against theft, which weije not made for
those who are basically the most honest, but for the pusillanimous,
weak elements. Such laws, by frightening the bad, are intended
to prevent the development of a condition in which ultimately
the honest man is regarded as the stupider, and consequently peo-
ple come more and more to the view that it is more expedient like-
wise to participate in theft than to look on with empty hands, or
even to let themselves be robbed.^

So it was false to believe that in a struggle, which by all human
prognosis might rage for years to come, we could dispense with
the instruments which the experience of many centuries, in fact
millenniums, showed to be those which, in the gravest times and
moments of the heaviest strain on the nerves, can compel weak
and uncertain men to the fulfillment of their duty.

For the volunteer hero we obviously needed no Articles of War,
but we did for the cowardly egotist, who in the hour of his peo-
ple’s distress sets his own life higher than that of the totality.
Such a spineless weakling can only be deterred from giving in to
his cowardice by the application of the hardest penalty. When
men struggle ceaselessly with death and have to hold out for
weeks without rest in mud-filled shell holes, sometimes with the
worst possible food, the vacillating soldier cannot be held in line
by threatening him with prison or even the workhouse, but only
by ruthless application of the death penalty. For experience
shows that at such a time he regards prison as a thousand times
more attractive a place than the battlefield, considering that in
prison at least his invaluable life is not menaced. And the fact
that in the War the death penalty was excluded, that in reality
the Articles of War were thus suspended, had terrible conse-
quences. An army of deserters, especially in 1918, poured into

526

Mein Kampe

the reserve posts and the home towns, and helped to form that
great criminal organization which, after November 7, 1918, we
suddenly beheld as the maker of the revolution.

The front itself really had nothing to do with it. All its mem-
bers felt only a longing for peace. But in this very fact lay tremen-
dous danger for the revolution. For when after the armistice the
German armies began to near home, the anxious question of the
revolutionaries was again and again: Whai will the front-line
troops do? Will the men in field gray stand for this?

In these weeks the revolution in Germany had to appear at
least outwardly moderate, if it did not want to run the risk of sud-
denly being smashed to bits by a few German divisions. For if at
that lime even a single divisional commander had taken the decision
to pull down the red rags with the help of his loyal and devoted divi-
sion and to stand the ‘councils’ up against the wall, to break possible
resistance with mine-throwers and hand-grenades, the division in less
than four weeks would have swollen to an army of sixty divisions.
This made the Jewish wirepullers tremble more than anything
else. And precisely to prevent this, they had to cover the revolu-
tion with a certain moderation; it coiild not take the form of Bol-
shevism, but, as things happened to stand, had to make a pre-
tense of Taw and order.’ Hence the innumerable great conces-
sions, the appeal to the old dvil service personnel, to the old army
leaders. They were needed for a certain time at least, and only
after the Moors had done their duty,^ could the wirepuller venture
to give them the kicks they had coming to them and take the
Republic out of the hands of the old state servants and surrender
it into the claws of the revolutionary vultures.

Only in this way could they hope to dupe old generals and old
civil ofiScials, to disarm in advance any possible resistance on their
part by an apparent innocence and mildness in the new regime.

And practice showed to what an extent this succeeded.

However, the revolution had not been made by elements of law
and order, but by elements of riot, theft, and plunder. And for

* This is a reference to Hitler’s pet quotation from Schiller’s Piesko. See
page 294, note.

COLIABORATION OF THE LefT PARTIES

527

them, the development of the revolution neither accorded with
their will, nor for tactical reasons could the course of events be
explained and made palatable to them.

With the gradual growth of the Social Democracy, it had lost
more and more the character of a brutal revolutionary party.
Not that its thoughts had ever served any other goal than that of
the revolution, or that its leaders had ever had other intentions;
by no means. But what finally remained was only the purpose and
a body no longer suited to its execution. With a party of ten mil-
lions it is no longer possible to make a resolution. In such a move-
ment you no longer have an extreme of activity, but the great
mass of the middle, that is, of inertia.

Out of this realization, while the War was still going on, the
famous split of the Social Democracy by the Jews took place;
that is: while the Social Democratic Party, in keeping with the
inertia of its mass, hung on national defense like a lead weight,
the radical-activistic elements were drawn out of it and formed
into forceful new assault columns. The Independent Party and the
Spartacus League were the storm battalions of revolutionary Marx-
ism. Their task was to create the accomplished fact, the ground-
work of which could be taken over by the masses of the Social
Democratic Party, which had been prepared for this over a period
of decades. The cowardly bourgeoisie, however, was not rightly
estimated by the Marxists, and were simply treated ‘en canaille.’
Of them no notice was taken whatever, for it was realized that
the doglike submissiveness of the political formations of an old
outlived generation would never be capable of serious resistance.

As soon as the revolution had succeeded and the main pillars of
the old state could be regarded as broken, but the front-line army,
marching home, began to appear as a terrif3dng sphinx, a brake
had to be applied to the natural development; the van of the So-
cial Democratic army occupied the conquered position, and the
Independent and Spartacist storm battalions were shoved aside.

This, however, did not take place without a struggle.

Not only that the activistic assault formations of the revolu-
tion were dissatisfied and felt cheated, and wanted to go on fight-

528

Mein Kahpf

ing on their own hook, but their unruly rowd 3 nsni was dt»ly too
welcome to the wirepullers of the revolution. For no sooner was
the revolution over than there rose within it two apparent camps:
the party of law and order and the group of bloody terror. Now
what was more natural than that our bourgeoisie should at once,
with fl 5 Tng colors, move into the camp of law and order? Now,
all at once, these wretched political organizations had an oppor-
tunity for an activity, in which, without being obliged to say so,
they nevertheless quietly found some ground beneath their feet
and came into a certain solidarity with the power which they
hated but even more fervently feared. The political German
bourgeoisie had received the high honor of being permitted to sit
down at the table with the accursed Marxist leaders to combat
the Bolshevists.

Thus, as early as December, 1918, and January, 1919, the fol-
lowing condition took form:

With a minority of the worst elements a revolution has been
made, and immediately backed by aU the Marxist parties. The
revolution itself has an apparently moderate stamp, which nets
it the hostility of the fanatical extremists. The latter begin to
shoot off machine guns and hand grenades, to occupy public
buildings, in short, to menace the moderate revolution. To
suppress the terror of such a further development, an armistice
is concluded between the supporters of the new state of affairs
and the adherents of the old one, for the purpose of carrying on
the struggle in common against the extremists. The result is that
the enemies of the Republic have given up their fight against the
Republic as such, and help to force down those who, though from
totally different angles, are likewise enemies of this Republic.
And the further result is that the danger of a struggle of the ad-
herents of the old state against those of the new one seems defin-
itely averted.

We cannot consider this fact often and dosely enough. Only
those who understand it can realize how it was possible that a
people, nine tenths of whom did not make a revolution, seven
tenths of whom reject it, and six tenths of whom hated it.

Capitulation of the Bourgeoisie

529

nevertheless could have this revolution forced on them by one
tenth.

Gradually the Spartadst barricade fighters on the one hand and
the nationalist fanatics and idealists on the other were bled white,
and in exact proportion as the two extremes wore each other out,
as always, the mass of the middle was victorious. The bourgeoisie
and Marxism met on a ‘ realistic basis,’ and the Republic began
to be ‘ consolidated.’ Which for the present, to be sure, did not
prevent the bourgeois parties, especially before elections, from
citing the monarchist idea for a time, in order, by means of the
spirits of the past, to be able to conjure the smaller spirits of their
adherents and ensnare them once more.

Honorable this was not. At heart they had all broken with the
monarchy long since, and the filth of the new condition had begun
to spread its seductive influences to the bourgeois party camp.
The usual bourgeois politician feels more at home today in the
muck of republican corruption than in the clean hardness which
he still remembers from the past state.

* •

As already stated, the revolution, after the smashing of the old
army, had been forced to create a new power factor for the rein-
forcement of its state authority. As things were, it could gain this
only from supporters of an outlook that was really opposed to it.
From them alone there could slowly arise a new army which, ex-
ternally limited by the peace treaties, would, with regard to its
mentality, have to be reshaped in the course of time into an in-
strument of the new state conception.

If we put to ourselves the question how — aside from all the
real mistakes of the old state, which were among its causes —
the revolution as an action could succeed, we come to the con-
clusion:

1. In consequence of the paralysis of our concepts of duly and
obedience, and

530

Mein Kahpf

2. In consequence of the cowardly passivity of owr so-called
state-preserving parties.

On these points the following may be said:

The paralysis of our concepts of duty and obedience has its
ultimate ground in our totally unnational education, oriented
solely toward the state. Here again this gives rise to a confusion
between means and end. Consciousness of duty, fulfillment of
duty, and obedience are not ends in themselves, any more than
the state is an end in itself; they should all be the means for mak-
ing possible and safeguarding on this earth the existence of a com-
munity of spiritually and physically homogeneous beings. In
an hour when a national body is visibly collapsing and to all ap-
pearances is exposed to the gravest oppression, thanks to the activity
of a few scoundrels, obedience and fulfillment of duty toward them
amount to doctrinaire formalism, in fact pure insanity, if the refusal
of obedience and ‘fulfillment of duty' would make possible the salva-
tion of a people from its ruin. According to our present-day bour-
geois state conception, the divisional commander who at that
time received from above the command not to shoot, acted duti-
fully and hence rightly in not shooting, since to bourgeois society,
thoughtless formal obedience is more valuable than the life of
their own people. According to the National Socialist conception,
however, it is not obedience toward weak superiors that goes into
force at such moments, but obedience toward the national com-
mimity. In such an hour, the duty of personal responsibility to-
ward a whole nation manifests itself.

The fact that a living conception of these terms had been lost in
our people or rather in our governments, giving way to a purely
doctrinaire and formal conception, was the cause of the revolu-
tion’s success.

On the second point, the following must be remarked:

The deeper reason for the cowardice of the ‘state-preserving’
parties is above all the departure of the activistic, well-intentioned
part of our people from their ranks — those who bled to death in
the field. Aside from this, our bourgeois parties, which we can
designate as the sole political formations which supported the old

Capitulation to Marxism

531

state, were convinced that they were entitled to defend their
views exclusively in the spiritual way and with spiritual weapons,
since the use of physical weapons was the sole prerogative of the
state. Not only that in such a conception we must see a symptom
of a gradually developing decadent weakness, but it was also
senseless at a time when a political opponent had long since
abandoned this standpoint and openly emphasized his intention
of putting forward his political aims by force when possible.
At the moment when Marxism appeared in the world of bour-
geois democracy, as one of its results, the bourgeois-democratic
appeal to carry on the struggle with ‘spiritual weapons’ was an
absurdity, which would one day bring dire consequences. For the
Marxists themselves from the very beginning came out for the
conception that the use of a weapon must be considered only ac-
cording to criteria of expediency, and that the right to use it re-
sides solely in success.

How correct this conception is was shown in the days of Novem-
ber 7 to 11, 1918. In those days the Marxists did not concern
themselves in the least about parliamentarianism and democracy,
but gave both of them the death blow with yelling and shooting
mobs of criminals. It goes without saying that in this same mo-
ment the bourgeois talking dubs were defenseless.

After the revolution, when the bourgeois parties suddenly re-
appeared, though with modified firm names, and their brave
leaders crawled out of the concealment of dark cellars and airy
storerooms, like all the representatives of such formations, they
had not forgotten their mistakes and likewise they had learned
nothing new. Their political program lay in the past, in so far
as they had not reconciled themselves at heart with the new state
of affairs; their aim, however, was to participate if possible in the
new state of affairs, and their sole weapons remained, as they had
always been, words.

Even after the revolution, the bourgeois parties at aU times
miserably capitulated to the streets.

When the Law for the Protection of the Republic * came up for

^ See page 270, note.

532

Mein Kampp

consideration, there was at first no majority in favor of it. But in
the face of the two hundred thousand demonstrating Marxists,
the bourgeois ‘statesmen’ were seized with such a fear that con-
trary to their conviction they accepted the law, in the miserable
fear that otherwise when they left the Reichstag they would be
beaten to a pulp by the furious masses. Which unfortunately,
in consequence of the law’s acceptance, did not take place.

And so the development of the new state went its ways, as
though there had not been any national opposition at all.

The sole organizations which at this time would have had the
courage and strength to oppose the Marxists and their incited
masses, were for the present the free corps, later the self-defense
organizations, citizens’ guards, etc., and finally the tradition
leagues.^

But why their existence brought ahoul no sort of shift that was in
any way discernible was due to the following:

Just as the so-called national parties could exert no sort of in-
fluence for lack of any threatening power on the streets, likewise the
so-called defense organizations, in turn, could exert no sort of in-
fluence for lack of any political idea, and above all of any real
political goal.

What had given Marxism its success was its complete combination
of political will and activislic brutality. What excluded national
Germany from any practical activity in shaping the German develop-
ment was the lack of a unified collaboration of brutal force with bril-
liant political will.

Whatever the wiU of the ‘national’ parties might be, they had
not the least power to fight for this will, least of all on the
streets.

The combat leagues had all the power, they were the masters of
the streets and the state, and possessed no political idea and no
political goal for which their strength was or even could be
thrown in for the benefit of national Germany. In both cases it
was the slyness of the Jew who, by clever persuasion and insist-
ence, was able to bring about a positive perpetuation, in any case

‘ Veterans’ organizations based on glorification of the old army.

No Fighting Strength Without an Idea 533

an increasing intensification, of this calamitous state of aSairs.

It was the Jew who through his press knew how to launch with
infinite dexterity the idea of the ‘unpolitical character' of the
combat leagues, as, on the other hand, in political life he always
praised and encouraged, with equal slyness, the ‘purely spiritual
nature’ of the struggle. Millions of German blockheads babbled
this nonsense after him, without having even the faintest idea
that in this way they were for practical purposes disarming them-
selves and exposing themselves defenseless to the Jew.

But for this, too, indeed, there is again a natural explanation.
The lack of a great, creative, renewing idea means at all times a limi-
tation of fighting force. Firm heli^ in the right to apply even the most
brutal weapons is always bound up with the existence of a fanatical
faith in the necessity of the victory of a revolutionary new order on
this earth.

A movement that is not fighting for such highest aims and ideals
will, therefore, never seize upon the ultimate weapon.

The fact of having a new great idea to show was the secret of
the success of the French Revolution; the Russian Revolution
owes its victory to the idea, and only through the idea did fascism
achieve the power to subject a people in the most beneficial way
to the most comprehensive creative renewal.

Of this, bourgeois parties are not capable.

But it was not only the bourgeois parties that saw their political
goal in a restoration of the past, but also the combat leagues, in so
far as they concerned themselves with any political aims at all.
Old veterans’ dub and Kyfihduser ^ tendendes were alive within
them and contributed to politically blunting the sharpest weapon
that national Germany had in those days and making it languish
in the mercenary service of the Republic. The fact that in this
they acted in the best conviction, and above all in the best good

* KyffhUuserbund der deutschen Landeskriegerverbdnde, a veterans’ organi-
zation founded in 1898. Before the War of 1914 it had over two million
members. It takes its name from the mountain in the Harz, within which,
according to the legend, Emperor Friedrich Barbaiossa lies sleeping, to
awaken in the hour of Germany’s greatest need.

534

Mein Kahpf

faith, changes nothing in the catastrophic madness of these oc-
currences.

Gradually Ma rxism obtained the required power to support its
authority in the Reichswehr that was being consolidated, and
thereupon, consistently and logically, began to disband as
superfluous the nationalist combat leagues, which seemed dan-
gerous. Individual leaders of especial boldness, who were looked
on with distrust, were haled before the bars of justice and put
behind Swedish curtains.^ But with all of them the destiny for
which they themselves were responsible was fulfilled^

* * *

With the founding of the NSD AP, for the first time a movement
had appeared whose goal did not, like that of the bourgeois par-
ties, consist in a mechanical restoration of the past, but in the
effort to erect an organic folkish state in place of the present sense-
less state mechanism.

The young movement, from the first day, espoused the standpoirU
that its idea must be put fonvard spiritmlly, but that the defense of
this spiritual platform must if necessary be secured by strong-arm
means. Faithful to its belief in the enormous significance of the
new doctrine, it seems obvious to the movement that for the at-
tainment of its goal no sacrifice can be too great.

I have already pointed to the forces which obligate a move-
ment, in so far as it wants to win the heart of a people, to assume
from its own ranks its defense against the terrorist attempts of
its adversaries. And it is an eternal experience of world history
that a terror represented by a philosophy of life can never be
broken by a formal state power, but at all times can be defeated
only by another, new philosophy of life, proceeding with the same
boldness and determination. This will at all times be displeasing
to the sentiment of the official guardians of the state, but that will
not banish the fact. State power can only guarantee law and

^ Thieves’ slang for prison bars.

Need eoe a Monitor Troop

535

order when the content of the state coincides with the philosophy
dominant at that particular time, so that violent elements possess
only the character of individual criminal natures, and are not re-
garded as proponents of an idea in extreme opposition to the state
views. In such a case, the state can for centuries apply the great-
est measures of violence against a terror oppressing it; in the end
it will nevertheless be able to do nothing against, it, but will go
down in defeat.

The German state is gravely attacked by Marxism. In its
struggle of seventy years it has not been able to prevent the vic-
tory of this philosophy of life, but, despite a sum total of thou-
sands of years in prison and jail sentences and the bloodiest
measures which in innumerable cases it applied to the warriors
of the menacing Marxist philosophy, has nevertheless been forced
to almost total capitulation. (This, too, the run-of-the-miU
bourgeois political leader will want to deny, though obviously
he win be unable to convince anyone.)

The state which on November 9, 1918, unconditionally
crawled on its belly before Marxism will not suddenly arise to-
morrow as its conqueror; on the contrary: even today feeble-
minded bourgeois in ministerial chairs are beginning to rave
about the necessity of not governing against the workers, and
what they have in mind under the concept ‘worker’ is Marxism.
But by identifying the German worker with Marxism, they not
only commit a falsification as cowardly as it is untrue, but at-
tempt by this motivation to conceal their own collapse in the
face of the Marxist idea and organization.

But in view of this fact — that is, the complete subjection of
the present state to Marxism — the National Socialist movement
really acquires the duty, not only of preparing the victory of its
idea, but of taking over its defense against the terror of an In-
ternational drunk with victory.

I have already described how in our movement a body for the
protection of meetings gradually developed out of practical life,
how it gradually assumed the character of a definite monitor
troop, and strove for an organizational form.

536

Mein Kampe

Much as this gradually arising body might outwardly resemble
a so-called combat league, it was nevertheless not to be compared
with one.

As already mentioned, the German combat organizations had
no definite political idea. They were really nothing but self-
defense leagues of more or less competent training and organiza-
tion, with th^ result that they actually represented an illegal
complement to the state’s momentary instruments of power.
Their character of free corps was based only on the way in which
they were formed and on the condition of the state at that time,
but they were by no means deserving of such a title as free forma-
tions of the struggle for a free conifiction of their own. This, de-
spite all the opposition of individual leaders and whole leagues
toward the Republic, they did not possess. For being convinced
of the inferiority of an existing condition does not suffice to entitle
one to speak of a conviction in the higher sense; no, the latter is rooted
only in the knowledge of a new condition and in the inner vision of
a condition the achievement of which one feels as a necessity, and
to stand up for whose realization one regards as one’s highest life task.

What distinguishes the monitor troop of the National Socialist
organization of that time essentially from all combat leagues is
that it was not and did not want to be in any way a servant of the
conditions created by the revolution, but that it fought exclu-
sively for a new Germany.

In the beginning, it is true, this monitor troop possessed only
the character of a meeting-hall guard. Its first task was a limited
one: it consisted in making it possible to hold meetings which
without it would have been simply prevented by the enemy.
Even then, it had been trained to carry out an attack blindly, but
not, as stupid German-folkish circles nonsensically claimed, be-
cause it honored the blackjack as the highest spirit, but because
it tmderstood that the greatest spirit can be eliminated when its
bearer is struck down with a blackjack, as in actual fact the most
significant heads in history have not seldom ended beneath the
blows of the pettiest helots.^ They did not want to set up vio-

^ ‘Heloten’ No change in second edition.

Failure of State Officials

537

lence as a goal, but to protect the prophets of the spiritual goal
from being shoved aside by violence. And in this they under-
stood that they were not obligated to undertake the protection
of a state which offers the nation no protection, but that, on the
contrary, they had to assume the protection of a nation against
those who threatened to destroy the people and the state.

After the meeting-hall battle in the Munich Hofbrauhaus the
monitor troop, once and for all, in eternal memory of the heroic
storm attacks of the small number they were then, received the
name of Sturmabieilung (storm section). As this very designation
indicates, it represents only a section of the movement. It is a
link in it, just as propaganda, the press, the scientific institutes
and so forth, constitute mere links in the party.

How necessary its development was, we could see, not only by
this memorable meeting, but also by our attempt gradually to
spread our movement from Munich into the rest of Germany.
Once we had appeared dangerous to the Marxists, they missed
no opportunity to nip any attempt at a National Socialist meet-
ing in the bud, or prevent it from being held by breaking it up.
And it was absolutely a matter of course that the party organiza-
tions of all shadings of Marxism blindly supported any such in-
tentions and any such occurrences in the representative bodies.
But what was one to say of bourgeois parties which themselves
had been so thrashed by the Marxists that in many places they
could no longer venture to have their speakers appear in public
and which, nevertheless, followed any struggles against Marxism
that in any way turned out unfavorably for us with an abso-
lutely incomprehensible, idiotic satisfaction. They were happy
that the enemy which could not be bested by them, which on the
contrary bested them, could not be broken by us either. What
should be said of state officials, police presidents, nay, even
ministers, who with a really disreputable lack of principle liked
to represent themselves publicly as ‘national men,’ but who in
all conflicts that we National Socialists had Vi'ith the Marxists,
acted as tne most disgraceful stooges for them? W'hat should be
said of men who went so far in their self-abasement that for a

538

Mein Kampe

pitiful word of praise in the Jewish newpsapers they did not hesi-
tate to persecute the men to whose heroism in risking their own
lives they in part owed the fact that a few years previous they
were not tattered corpses hung up on lamp-posts by the Red
mob?

These were such sad figures that they once moved the unfor-
gettable late President Pohner, who in his hard straightforward-
ness hated all crawlers as only a man with an honest heart can
hate, to the harsh utterance: ‘All my life I wanted to be nothing
else than first a German and then an official, and I would never
like to be confused with those creatures who prostitute them-
selves like official whores to everyone who can play the master at
the moment.’

And in all this it was especially sad that this kind of men gradu-
ally gained power over tens of thousands of the most honorable
and best German civil servants, but even gradually infected them
with their own disloyalty, and persecuted the honest ones with
grim hatred and finally drove them out of their posts and posi-
tions, while they themselves, with lying hypocrisy, stiU repre-
sented themselves as ‘national’ men.

From such men we could never hope for any support, and we
obtained it only in the very rarest cases. Solely the development
of our own defense organization could safeguard the activity of
the movement and at the same time win for it that public atten-
tion and general respect which are accorded to the man who,
when attacked, takes up his own defense.

As the directing idea for the inner training of this storm sec-
tion, the intention was always dominant, aside from aU physical
education, to teach it to be an unshakable, convinced defender of
the National Socialist idea, and finally to strengthen its dis-
cipline in the highest degree. It should have nothing in common
with a combat organization of bourgeois conception, but likewise
nothing in conunon with a secret organization.

The reason why, even at that time, I sharply opposed having
the SA of the NSDAP organized as a so-called combat league,
was based on the following consideration:

Why No Combat Leagues?

539

From the purely practical point of view, the military training of
a people cannot be carried out by private leagues, except with the
help of the most enormous state means. Any other belief is based
on great overestimation of their own ability. And so it is out of the
question that organizations possessing military value can be
built up beyond certain limits with so-called ‘voluntary disci-
pline.’ The most important support of the power to command is
lacking, to wit, the power to punish. To be sure, it was possible
in the fall, or even better in the spring of 1919, to set up so-called
‘free corps,’ but not only did most of them possess front-line
fighters who had gone through the school of the old army, but
the type of obligation which they laid upon the individuals
subjected them, for a limited time at least, just as uncondition-
ally to military obedience.

This is totally lacking in a voluntary 'combat organization ’ of
today. The larger the league, the weaker its discipline will be, the
smaller the demands made on the individual men, and the more
the whole will take on the character of the old non-political sol-
diers’ and veterans’ clubs.

It win never be possible to carry out a voluntary training for
army service among the great masses without guaranteed un-
conditional power of command. Never wiH more than a few be
willing to submit of their own accord to such forced obedience
as was considered self-evident and natural in the army.

Furthermore, real training cannot be given in consequence of
the absurdly small means at the disposal of a so-called combat
league for such a purpose. But the best, most reliable training
should be precisely the main task of such an institution. Since the
War, eight years have gone by, and since that time not a single
age class among our German youth has been systematically
trained. But it cannot be the function of a combat league to
include the old classes that have already been trained, since
otherwise it can at once be reckoned mathematically when the
last member will leave this corporation. Even the youngest sol-
dier of 1918 will in twenty years be incapable of fighting, and we
are approaching this moment with a disquieting speed. Thus

540

Mein Kampe

every so-called combat league must necessarily assume more and
more the character of an old soldiers’ association. This, however,
cannot be the purpose of an organization that designates itself
not as an old soldiers' league, but as a Wehrverband (combat
league), and which by its very name endeavors to express the fact
that it sees its mission, not only in the preservation of the tradi-
tion and comqion bond of former soldiers, but in the development
of the military (^ehr) idea, and in the practical advocacy of this
idea, that is, in the creation of a military body.

This task, however, absolutely demands the training of ele-
ments which had previously received no military drill, and this in
practice is actually impossible. With one or two hours training
a week, you really cannot make a soldier. With the present-day
enormously increased demands that warfare makes on the in-
dividual, a two-year period service is perhaps just adequate to
transform an untrained young man into an expert soldier. We
have all of us in the field seen the terrible consequences that re-
sulted for young soldiers not thoroughly trained in their trade.
Volunteer formations, which for fifteen or twenty weeks had been
drilled with iron determination and boundless devotion, never-
theless represented nothing but cannon fodder at the front. Only
distributed among the ranks of experienced old soldiers could
younger recruits, trained for from four to six months, furnish
useful members of a regiment; even then they were directed by
the ‘old men’ and thus gradually grew into their functions.

How thoughtless in contrast seems an attempt to try to create
troops with a so-called training period of one or two hours a
week, without clear power of command and without extensive
means! It might be possible to freshen up old soldiers in this way,
but never to turn young men into soldiers.

How indifferent and totally worthless such a procedure would
be in its results can be demonstrated especially by the fact that,
while a so-called volunteer league, with puffing and blowing, with
trouble and grief, trains or tries to train a few thousand- essen-
tially well-intentioned men (it does not get to any others) in the
military idea, the state itself, by the pacifistic-democratic nature

Why No Combat Leagues?

541

of its education, consistently robs millions and millions of young
people of their natural instincts, poisons their logical patriotic
thinki ng, and thus gradually transforms them into a herd of sheep,
patiently accepting every arbitrary t3o:anny.

How absurd, in comparison with this, are all the exertions of the
combat leagues to transmit their ideas to the German youth.

But almost more important is the following consideration,
which had always made me take a position counter to any at-
tempt at a so-caUed military rearming on the basis of volunteer
leagues.

Assuming that despite the above-mentioned difficulties a
league nevertheless succeeded in training a definite number of
Germans year after year into arms-bearing men — equally with
respect to their convictions as with respect to their physical fit-
ness and schooling in the use of arms — the result would never-
theless be practically nil in a state which, by its whole tendency,
absolutely does not desire such military education, in fact posi-
tively hates it, since it stands in complete contradiction to the
aim of its leaders — the destroyers of this state.

In any case such a result would be worthless under govern-
ments which have not only demonstrated by their deeds that they
care nothing about the military strength of the nation, but which
above aU would never be willing to issue an appeal to this strength,
except at best for the support of their own ruinous existence.

And today this is the case. Or is it not absurd to try to train
some tens of thousands of men for a government in the (iim light
of dawn and evening, when the state a few years previous dis-
gracefully sacrified eight and a half millions of the best-trained
soldiers, not only ceasing to use them, but as thanks for their
sacrifices actually exposing them to general vilification? And so
they want to train soldiers for a state regime which befoided and
spat upon the most glorious soldiers of former days, tore their
decorations from their chest, took away their cockades, trampled
their banners and degraded their achievements? Or has this
present state regime ever undertaken a single step to restore the
honor of the oH army, to call to account those who have cor-

542

Mein Kahfe

rupted and reviled it? Not in the slightest. On the contrary: we
can see these creatures enthroned in the highest state posts. —
Remember the words spoken at Leipzig: ‘ Right goes with power.’
But since today in our Republic the power lies in the hands of the
same mpn who engineered the revolution, and this revolution
represents the vilest high treason, nay, the most wretched piece
of villainy in. all fi rman history, really no reason can be found
for enhanring the power of these very characters by the formation
of a new young army. In any event, all the arguments of reason
speak against it.

But what importance this state, even after the revolution of
1918, attributed to the military strengthening of its position could
be seen clearly and unmistakably by its attitude toward the large
self-defense organizations that then existed. As long as they had
to intervene for the protection of personally cowardly creatures
of the revolution, they were not unwelcome. But as soon as,
thanks to the gradually increasing depravity of our people, the
danger to these creatures seemed eliminated and the existence
of the leagues meant a strengthening of the national-political
forces, they were superfluous, and everything was done to dis-
arm them, in fact, if possible to break them up.

Only in the rarest examples does history show gratitude in
princes. But to count on the gratitude of revolutionary pyro-
maniac murderers, plunderers of the people and traitors to the
nation, is something that only a neo-bourgeois patriot can man-
age. In any case, I, in examining the question of whether volun-
teer combat leagues should be created, could never refrain from
the question : for whom am I training the young people? For what
purpose are they used and when are they to be called up? The
answer to this question provides at the same time the best direc-
tives for our own attitude.

If the present state were ever to train forces of this sort, it
would never be for the defense of national interests against the
outside world, but only for the protection of the rapers of the
nation at home against the general rage that some day perhaps
will flare up in the swindled, betrayed, and sold-but people.

No Secret Organizations

543

For this reason alone, the SA of the NSDAP could have no-
thing in comnaon with a military organization. It was an instru-
ment for defense and education in the National Socialist move-
ment, and its tasks lay in an entirely different province from that
of the so-called combat leagues.

But it could also constitute no secret organization. The aim of
secret organizations can only be illegal. In this way the scope of
such an organization is automatically limited. It is not possible,
especially in view of the talkativeness of the Gennan people, to
buUd up an organization of any size and at the same time to keep
it outwardly secret or even to veil its aims. Any such intention
will be thwarted a thousand times. Not only that our police
authorities today have a staff of pimps and similar rabble at their
disposal who will betray anything they can find for thirty pieces
of silver, and even invent things to betray, but the supporters
themselves can never be brought to the silence that is necessary
in such a case. Only very small groups, by years of sifting, can
assume the character of real secret organizations. But the very
smaUness of such organizations would remove their value for the
National Socialist movement. What we needed and still need were
and are not a hundred or two hundred reckless conspirators, but a
hundred thousand and a second hundred thousand fighters for our
philosophy of life. We should not work in secret conventicles, but
in mighty mass demonstrations, and it is not by dagger and poison
or pistol that the road can be cleared for the movement, but by the con-
quest of the streets. We must teach the Marxists that the future mas-
ter of the streets is National Socialism, just as it will some day he the
master of the state.

The danger of secret organizations today lies, furthermore, in
the fact that the members often totally misunderstand the mag-
nitude of the task, and the opinion arises that the fate of a people
really might be suddenly decided in a favorable sense by a single
act of murder. Such an opinion can have its historical justifica-
tion especially when a people languishes under the tyranny of
some oppressor genius, of whom it is known that his outstanding
personality alone guarantees the inner solidity and frightfulness

544

Mein Kamfe

of the hostile pressure. In such a case, a self-sacrificing man may
suddenly spring forth from a people, to plunge the steel of death
into the breast of the hated individual. And only the republican
sentiment of petty scoundrels with a had conscience will regard
such a deed as horrible, while our people’s greatest poet of free-
dom has dared to give a glorification of such an action in his
Tell.

In the years 1919 and 1920 there existed a danger that the mem-
ber of secret organizations, filled with enthusiasm by the great
models of history and horrified by the boundless misfortune of
his fatherland, should attempt to avenge himself against the de-
stroyers of his homeland, in the belief that in this way he could
put an end to the distress of his people. Any such attempt, how-
ever, was an absurdity, because Marxism had not been victorious
thanks to the superior genius and personal significance of an in-
dividual, but by the boundless contemptibleness, the cowardly
failure of the bourgeois world. The most cruel criticism that can
be made of our bourgeoisie lies in the fact that the revolution it-
self did not produce a single leader of any greatness and neverthe-
less subjected it. It is understandable to capitulate to a Robes-
pierre, a Danton or a Marat, but it is devastating to have crawled
before the scrawny Scheidemann, the fat Herr Erzberger ^ and a
Friedrich Ebert and all the other innumerable political midgets.
In reality there was not one leader who might have been regarded
as the genius of the revolution rind hence the misfortune of the
fatherland; they were riU revolutionary bedbugs, knapsack Spar-
tacists, wholesale and retail. To put any one of these out of the
way was completely irrelevant and the chief result was that a
few other bloodsuckers, just as big and just as threadbare, came
into a job that much sooner.

In those years it was not possible to attack sharply enough a
conception which had its cause and explanation in the really great

* On Ebert and Scheidemann see page 199, note. Mattias Erzberger was
vice-chancellor in the cabinet of Gustav Bauer which accepted the peace
treaty on June 23, 1919. He was murdered on August 26, 1921, by two young
soldiers of the Ehrhardt Brigade, a Rightist military orgihization. .

Should Traitors Be ‘Eliminated’?

545

figures of history, but was not in the least suited to the present era
of dwarfs.

Likewise, in the question of eliminating so-called traitors against
the nation the same consideration is in order. It is absurdly il-
logical to kill a scamp who has informed about a cannon,* while
next door in the highest posts and dignities sit scoundrels who
have sold a whole Reich, who have the vain sacrifice of two mil-
lions on their consciences, who bear the responsibility for mil-
lions of cripples, and with all this calmly carry on their republican
business deals. It is senseless to eliminate petty traitors in, a
country whose government itself frees these traitors against the
nation from any punishment. For then it is possible that some
day the honest idealist, who puts a scoundrelly armaments stool-
pigeon out of the way, for his people, is called to account by capi-
tal traitors against the nation. Therefore, it is an important ques-
tion: Should we have such a traitorous petty creature eliminated
by another creature or by an idealist? In one case the success is
doubtful and the treason for later almost certain; in the other
case, a small scoundrel is eliminated and the life of a perhaps im-
replaceable idealist is risked.

Further, in this question, my position is that there is no use in
hanging petty thieves in order to let big ones go free; but that
some day a German national court must judge and execute some
ten thousand of the organizing and hence responsible criminals
of the November betrayal and everything that goes with it.
Such an example will provide the small armaments stool-pigeon
with the necessary lesson for aU time.

All these are considerations which caused me again and again to
forbid participation in secret organizations and to preserve the
SA itself from the character of such organizations. In those years
I kept the National Socialist movement away from experiments,
whose performers for the most part were glorious, idealistic-

* At this time there were various nationalist military leagues with unof-
ficial Reichswehr connections, specializing in the illegal concealment of
arms. Numerous murders occurred of persons believed to have reported
secret arms cachg; to the Allied Control Commission.

546

Mein Kampe

minded young Germans, whose acts, however, only made victims
of themselves, but were powerless to improve the lot of the
fatherland even in the slightest.

# * *

Now if the SA could be neither a military combat organization
nor a secret league, the following consequences inevitably re-
sulted:

1. Its training must not proceed from military criteria, but from
criteria of expediency for the party.

In so far as the members require physical training, the main
em phasi s must be laid, not on military drilling, but on athletic
activity. Boxing and jiu-jitsu have always seemed to me more
important t han any inferior, because incomplete, training in
marksmanshi p. Give the German nation six million bodies with
flawless athletic training, all glowing with fanatical love of their
coimtry and inculcated with the highest offensive spirit, and a
national state wiU, in less than two years if necessary, have
created an army, at least in so far as a certain basic core is pres-
ent. This, as things are today, can rest only in the Reichswehr
and not in any combat league that has always done things by
halves. Physical culture must inoculate the individual with the
conviction of his superiority and give him that self-confidence
which lies forever and alone in the consciousness of his own
strength; in addition, it must give him those athletic skills which
serve as a weapon for the defense of the movement.

2. In order, at the outset, to prevent the SA from assuming any
secret character, in addition to its uniform immediately recognizable
to all, the very size of its membership must point the way which bene-
fits the movement and is knavon to the whole public. It must not hold
sessions in secret, but must march beneath the open sky, thus
being put unmistakably into a type of activity which destroys
all legends of ‘secret organization’ once and for all. And in order
to remove it, spiritually as weU, from aii attempts to satisfy its
activism by petty conspiracies, it had from the very beginning to

First National Socialist March in Munich 547

be initiated completely into the great idea of the movement and
to be educated so thoroughly in the task of fighting for this idea
that its horizon broadened from the outset, and the individual
man saw his mission, not in the elimination of any greater or lesser .
scoundrel, but in fighting for the erection of a new National
Socialist folkish state. Thereby the struggle against the present-
day state was removed from the atmosphere of petty actions of
revenge and conspiracy, to the greatness of a philosophical war of
annihilation against Marxism and its organization.

3. The organizational formation of the SA, as well as its uniform
and equipment, can therefore not reasonably emulate the models of
the old army, but must pursue an expediency determined by its func-
tion.

These views, which directed me in 1920 and 1921 and which I
gradually endeavored to inject into the young organization, had
the result that, as early as midsummer, 1922, we disposed of an
imposing number of companies, which in late autumn, 1922, little
by little received their special distinguishing uniforms. Three
events were of infinite importance for the further shaping of the
SA.

1. The great general demonstration of all patriotic leagues
against the Law for the Protection of the Republic in late summer
1922 on the Kdnigsplatz in Munich.

The patriotic leagues of Munich had issued an appeal summon-
ing a gigantic demonstration as a protest against the introduction
of the Law for the Protection of the Republic. The National
Socialist movement was also expected to participate in it. The
solid procession of the party was headed by six Munich com-
panies, followed by the sections of the political party. In the
column itself marched two brass bands, and about fifteen flags
were carried along. The arrival of the National Socialists in the
half -filled square, which was otherwise void of flags, aroused
immeasureable enthusiasm. I myself had the honor of being privi-
leged to address the crowd, now numbering sixty thousand heads,
as one of the orators.

The succe^ of the rally was overpowering, particularly be-

548

Mein Kampe

cause, in defiance of all Red threats, it was proved for the first
time that national Munich, too, could march in the streets.
Red republican defense corps (Schutzbund), who attempted to
proceed with terror against the approaching columns, were
within a few minutes scattered with bloody skulls by SA detach-
ments. The National Socialist movement then for the first time
showed its determination to claim for itself the right to the
streets in the future, thus wresting this monopoly from the hands
of the international traitors to the people and enemies of the
fatherland.

The result of this day was an incontestable proof of the psycho-
logical and also organizational soundness of our conceptions with
regard to the structure of the SA.

On the foundation which had been so successfully proven, it
was energetically broadened, so that only a few weeks later double
the number of companies had been set up.

2. The march to Coburg in October, 1922.

‘Folkish’ associations planned to hold a so-called ‘German
Day’ in Coburg. I myself received an invitation to it, remarking
that it would be desirable for me to bring an escort. This re-
quest, which I received at eleven o’clock in the morning, came
very opportimely. An hour later the arrangements for attending
this ‘German Day’ had been issued. As an ‘escort’ I appointed
eight hundred men of the SA; we arranged to transport them in
approximately fourteen companies by special train to the little
city that had become Bavarian.^ Similar orders went out to Na-
tional Socialist SA groups which had meanwhile been formed in
other places.

It was the first time that such a special train w'as used in Ger-
many. At all towns where new SA men got in, the transport
aroused much attention. Many people had never seen our fiags
before; the impression they made was very great.

When we arrived at the Coburg station, we were received by a
deputation of the organizers of the ‘German Day,’ which con-

^ Coburg, former co-capital of the Duchy of Saxony-Coburg-Gotha, was a
separate administrative entity up to 1920 when it became p& of Bavaria.

The March to Coburg

549

veyed to us an order from the local trade unions — in other
words, from the Independent ^ and Communist Party — to the
effect that we were forbidden to enter the town with flags un-
furled, or with music (we had taken along a forty-two-piece
band of our own), or to march in a solid column.

I at once flatly rejected these disgraceful conditions, and did
not fail to express to the gentlemen present, the organizers of this
congress, my surprise that they had carried on negotiations with
these people and entered into agreements; I declared that the SA
would inunediately line up in companies and march into the dt}'"
with resounding music and flags flying.

And that is just what happened.

On the square in front of the railroad station we were received
by a howling, shrieking mob numbering thousands. ‘Murder-
ers,’ ‘bandits,’ ‘robbers,’ ‘criminals,’ were the pet names which
the model founders of the German Republic affectionately show-
ered on us. The young SA kept exemplary order, the companies
formed on the square in front of the station, and at first took no
notice of the vulgar abuse. In the dty that was strange to all of
us, frightened police officials led the marching column, not, as
arranged, to our quarters, a shooting gallery situated on the
periphery of Coburg, but to the Hofbrauhauskeller, near the cen-
ter of the city. To left and right of the procession, the uproar of
the masses of people accompanying us increased more and more.
Hardly had the last company turned into the courtyard of the
Keller than great masses, amid deafening cries, tried to crowd in
after us. To prevent this, the police locked the Kdler. Since this
state of affairs was intolerable, I had the SA line up once again,
gave them a brief speech of admonition, and demanded that the
police open the gates immediatdy. After a long hesitation, they
yidded.

To get to our quarters, we marched back the way we had come,
and now at last a stand had to be taken. After they had been
unable to disturb the poise of our companies by cries and insulting
shouts, the representatives of true sodalism, equality, and fra-

^ See page 36^, note.

550

Mein Kampe

temity had recourse to stones. At this our patience was at an
end, and so for ten whole minutes a devastating hail fell from
left and right, and a quarter of an hour later, there was nothing
red to be seen in the streets.

In the evening there were serious clashes again. Some National
Socialists had been assaulted singly, and patrols of the SA found
them in a terrible condition. Thereupon we made short shrift of
our foes. By next morning the Red terror, under which Coburg
had suffered for years, had been broken.

With real Marxist- Jewish lies they now attempted to harry the
‘comrades of the international proletariat’ back into the streets,
by totally twisting the facts and maintaining that our ‘bands of
murderers’ had begun a ‘war of extermination against peaceful
workers’ in Coburg. The great ‘demonstration of the people,’
which, it was hoped, tens of thousands of workers from the whole
vicinity would attend, was set for half-past one. Therefore,
firmly resolved to dispose of the Red terror for good, I ordered
the SA, which had meanwhile swollen to nearly one and a half
thousand men, to line up, and set out with them on the march
for the Fortress of Coburg, by way of the great square on which
the Red demonstration was to t£ike place. I wanted to see whether
they would dare to molest us again. When we entered the square,
. only a few hundred were present instead of the announced ten
thousand, and at our approach they kept generally quiet, and
some ran away. Only at a few points did Red troops, who had
meanwhile come from the outside and who did not yet know us,
try to pester us again; but in the twinkling of an eye, all their
enthusiasm was spoiled. And now it could be seen how the
frightened and intimidated population slowly woke up and took
courage, and ventured to shout greetings at us, and in the evening
as we were marching off broke into spontaneous cheering in many
places.

At the station the railroad men suddenly informed us that they
would not run the train. Thereupon I notified a few of the ring-
leaders that in that case I planned to round up whatever Red
bosses fell into my hands, and that we would run- the train our-

The SA Proves Itself

551

selves; however, we would take along a few dozen of the brothers
of international solidarity on the locomotive and the tender and
in every car. Nor did I fail to call it to the gentlemen’s attention
that the trip with our own forces would, of course, be an extremely
risky undertaking and that it was not excluded that the whole
lot of us should break our necks and bones. But, anyway, in
that case, we should be delighted to leave for the ^Hereafter, not
alone but in equality and fraternity with the Red gentlemen.

Thereupon the train departed with the utmost punctuality,
and we were back in Munich safe and sound the following morn-
ing.

Thus, for the first time since 1914 the equality of citizens be-
fore the law was re-established in Coburg. For if today some
simpleton of a higher official ventures the assertion that the state
protects the lives of its citizens, this was certainly not the case
at that time; for at that time the citizens had to defend them-
selves against the representatives of the present-day state.

At first the importance of this day could not be fully evaluated
by its consequences. Not only that the victorious SA had been
enormously enhanced in its self-confidence and its faith in the
soundness of its leadership, but the outside w'orld also began to
follow our doings more closely, and many for the first time recog-
nized in the National Socialist movement the institution which
in all probability would some day be called upon to put a suitable
end to the Marxist madness.

Only the democrats groaned that anyone could dare not peace-
fully to let his skuU be bashed in, and that vmder a democratic
republic we had had the audacity to oppose a brutal attack with
fists and cudgels instead of pacifistic songs.

On the whole, the bourgeois press, as usual, was partly pitiful
and partly contemptible, and only a few honest newspapers
greeted the fact that in one place at least someone had dared to
call a halt to the activity of the Marxist highwaymen, i t

In Coburg itself, at least a part of the Marxist working dass,
which incidentally could be regarded only as misled, had learned
a lesson from the fists of National Socialist labor and been taught ^

552

Mein Kahpe

to realize that these workers also light for ideals, since, as ex-
perience shows, men fight only for something that they believe
in and love.

The greatest benefit, however, was derived by the SA itself.
It now grew with great rapidity, and at the Party Day held on
January 27, 1923, approximately six thousand men could take
part in the dedication of the flag, and the first companies were
fully equipped with their new uniforms.

For the experience in Coburg had shown how necessary it is,
and not only in order to strengthen the esprit de corps, but also to
avoid confusion and forestall mutual non-recognition, to introduce
uniform dress among the SA. Until then it wore only the arm-
band; now the canvas jacket and the well-known cap were added.

And, furthermore, the experience of Coburg had the signifi-
cance that we now began systematically, in aU places where for
many years the Red terror had prevented any meeting of people
with different ideas, to break this terror and restore freedom of as-
sembly. From now on. National Socialist battalions were as-
sembled again and again in such localities, and in Bavaria gradu-
ally one Red citadel after another fell a victim to National Social-
ist propaganda. The SA had grown more and more into its task,
and so had moved further and further away from the character
of a senseless and unimportant defense movement and risen to
the level of a living organization of struggle for the erection of a
new German state.

This logical development lasted until March, 1923. Then there
occurred an event which compelled me to shift the movement
from its previous course and subject it to a modification.

3. The occupaiion of the Ruhr by the French in the first months
of 1923 had in the following period a great significance for the
development of the SA.

Even today it is not yet possible, and particularly in the na-
tional interest not expedient, to speak or write of this with full
publicity. I can only express myself in so far as this theme has
already been touched upon in public proceedings and thus brought
to the knowledge of the public. *-

Atjttjmn 1923

553

The occupation of the Ruhr, which came as no surprise to us,
gave rise to the justified hope that now at length there would be
an end to the cowardly policy of retreat, and that with this a
definite task would fall to the combat leagues. And the SA, which
then embraced many thousands of young powerful men, could not
fittingly be excluded from this national service. In the spring
and midsummer of 1923 it_was reshaped into a military fig h t i n g
organization. To it the later development of 1923, in so far as it
concerned our movement, was attributable.

Since I treat the development of 1923 in broad outlines else-
where, I shall only state here that the reorientation of the SA
was a harmful one from the viewpoint of the movement, if the
presuppositions that had led to its reorientation — that is, the
resumption of active resistance against France — did not ma-
terialize.

The close of the year 1923, terrible as it may seem at first
sight, may, if viewed from a higher standpoint, be regarded as
positively necessary, in so far as with one stroke it ended the re-
orientation of the SA, made pointless by the attitude of the Ger-
man Reich government and hence harmful for the movement, and
thus created the possibility of building some day at the point
where we had once been forced to relinquish the correct road.

The NSDAP, newly founded in 1925, must again set up, train,
and organize its SA according to the aforementioned principles.
It must thus return to the original healthy views, and must now
once more find its highest task in creating, in its SA, an instru-
ment for the conduct and reinforcement of the movement’s
struggle for its philosophy of life.

It must neither suffer the SA to degenerate into a kind of com-
bat league nor into a secret organization; it must, on the con-
trary, endeavor to train it as a guard, numbering hundreds of
thousands of men, for the National Sodalist and hence profoundly
foUdsh idea.

CHAPTER

vX

Federalism as a Mask

In the winter of 1919, and even more in
the spring and summer of 1920, the young party was forced to
take a position on a question which even during the War rose to
an immense importance. In the first volume, in my brief account
of the symptoms of the threatening German collapse that were
visible to me personally, I have pointed to the special type of
propaganda which was carried on by the English as well as the
French for the purpose of tearing open the old cleft between
North and South. In spring, 1915, there appeared the first syste-
matic agitational leaflets attacking Prussia, as solely responsible
for the War. By 1916, this system had been brought to full per-
fection, as adroit as it was treacherous. And after a short time
the agitation of the South German against the North German,
calculated on the lowest instincts, began to bear fruit. It is a re-
proach that must be raised against the authorities of that time,
in the government as well as the army command — or rather the
Bavarian staff offices — a reproach which these last cannot shake
off, that in their damnable blindness and disregard of duty they
did not proceed against this with the necessary determination.
Nothing was done! On the contrary, various quarters did not
seem to take it so much amiss, and they were small-minded
enough to believe that such a propaganda would not only put a
bar in the path of the development of the German people toward
unity, but that it would inevitably and automatically bring a

War Societies and Anti-Prussian Sentiment 555

strengthening of the federative forces. Scarcely ever in history
has a malicious omission brought more evil consequences. The
weakening these men thought they were administering to Prussia
struck the whole of Germany. And its consequence was the ac-
celeration of the collapse, which, however, not only shattered
Germany herself, but primarily, in point of fact, the individual
states themselves.

In the city where the artificially fanned hatred against Prussia
raged most violently, the revolution was first to break out against
the hereditary royal house.

Yet it would be false to believe that the manufacture of this
anti-Prussian mood is attributable solely to hostile war propa-
ganda and that the people afiected by it had no grounds of justi-
fication. The incredible way in which our war economy was
organized, a positively insane centralization that held the whole
German Reich territory in tutelage and pillaged it to the limit,
was one of the main reasons for the rise of this anti-Prussian
sentiment. For the average little man, the viar societies,^ which hap-
pened to have their central offices in Berlin, and Berlin itself, were
synonymous with Prussia. It scarcely dawned on the individual
at that time that the organizers of this institute of robbery, known
as ‘war societies,’ were neither Berliners nor Prussians, in fact,
were not Germans at all. He saw only the great faults and the
constant encroachments of this hated institution in the capital
and then naturally transferred his whole hatred to the capital and
Prussia simultaneously, all the more so since in certain quarters
not only nothing was done about this, but such an interpretation
was even secretly and smirkingly welcomed.

The Jew was far too shrewd not to realize in those days that the
infamous campaign of pillage that he was then organizing against
the German people, under the cloak of the war societies, would,
nay, must, arouse resistance. But as long as it did not spring at

* Kriegsgesellschaften. These were the corporations, with state participa-
tion and control, established in 1914 to carry on war production. For some
months at the beginning of the War, W alter Rathenau, a Jew, headed the raw
material department of the Prussian war ministry.

556

Mein Kampe

his own throat, he had no need to fear it. But in order to prevent
an explosion of the masses driven to despair and indignation in
this direction, there could be no better prescription than to cause
their rage to flare up elsewhere, thus using it up.

Let Bavaria fight against Prussia and Prussia against Bavaria
as much as they wanted, the more the better! The hottest strug-
gle between the two meant the securpst peace for the Jew. In this
way, the general attention was entirely diverted from the inter-
national maggot of nations. And if the danger seemed to arise
that thoughtful elements, of which there were many in Bavaria,
as elsewhere, called for understanding, reflection, and restraint
and so the embittered struggle threatened to die down, the Jew
in Berlin needed only to stage a new provocation and wait for the
result. Instantly all the beneficiaries of the conflict between
North and South flung themselves on every such occurrence, and
kept on blowing until the flame of indignation had again burst
into a roaring blaze.

It was an adroit, subtle game that the Jew then played, con-
stantly occupying and distracting the individual German tribes,
eind meanwhile pillaging them the more thoroughly.

Then came the revolution.

If up to the year 1918, or rather up to November of this year,
the average man, and especially the little-educated petit bour-
geois and worker, especially in Bavaria, could not yet correctly
estimate the real course and the inevitable consequences of the
quarrel of German tribes among themselves, the section calling
themselves ‘national’ should at least have had to recognize it on
the day of the outbreak of the revolution. For no sooner had the
action succeeded than in Bavaria the leader and organizer of the
revolution became the defender of ‘Bavarian’ interests. The
international Jew Kurt Eisner began to play Bavaria against
Prussia. It goes without sa3dng, however, that this Oriental
who spent his time as a newspaper joumaille * rurming all over

* JotirnaUle is a brunch word composed of ‘journal’ and ‘canaille,’ at-
tributed to Karl Kraus, editor and writer of the Viennese magazine ‘Die
Fackel.’ ZeilungsjournaiUe is a typical Hitlerian redundancy.

Kurt Eisner, the ‘Bavarian Particularist’ 557

Germany, was unquestionably the last man fitted to defend
Bavarian interests, and that to him, in particular, Bavaria was
a matter of the utmost indifference possible on God’s earth.

In giving the revolutionary uprising in Bavaria a thoroughly con-
scious edge against the rest of the Reich, Kurt Eisner did not in the
least act from Bavarian motives, but solely as the servant of the Jews.
He used the existing instincts and dislikes of the Bavarian people,
to help him break up Germany the more easily. The shattered
Reich would have easily fallen a prey to Bolshevism.

After his death the tactics applied by him were at first con-
tinued. The Marxists, who had always covered the individual
states and their princes in Germany with the bloodiest scorn,
now came out as an ' Independent Party’ and suddenly appealed
to those feelings and instincts which had their strongest roots in
princely houses and individual states.

The fight of the Bavarian Republic of Councils^ against the
approaching contingents of liberation was dressed up by propa-
ganda as mainly a ‘struggle of the Bavarian workers’ against
‘Prussian mUitarisni.’ Only from this can it be understood why
in Munich, quite unlike the other German territories, the over-
throw of the Republic of Councils did not bring the great masses
to their senses, but rather led to an even greater bitterness and
rancor against Prussia.

The skill with which the Bolshevistic agitators were able to
represent the elimination of the Republic of Councils as a ‘Prus-
sian militaristic’ victory against the ‘anti-militaristic’ and ‘anti-
Prussian ’ Bavarian people, bore rich fruit. While Kurt Eisner, on
the occasion of the elections to the legislative Bavarian Provincial
Diet in Munich, still could summon not even ten thousand sup-

^ After the murder of Kurt Eisner there was at first a Majority Socialist
government under Hoffmann. On April 7, the Workers’ Councils proclaimed
the Republic of Councils. A temporary council was formed of Independents
and the Bavarian Peasant League {Bauernbund). On April 10, this was
overthrown by the Communists, partly under Russian leadership. Free
corps from surrounding states marched on Munich and occupied it on May 1,
1919.

SS8

Mein Kampf

porters, and the Co mm unist Party actually remained under three
thousand, after the collapse of the Republic both parties together
had risen to nearly a hundred thousand voters.

As early as this period my personal fight against the insane
incitement of German tribes against each other began.

I believe that in all my life I have undertaken no more unpopu-
lar cause thaji my resistance at that time to the anti-Pnissian
agitation. In Munich, even diuing the Soviet period, the first
mass meetings had taken place, in which hatred against the rest
of Germany and in particular against Prussia was lashed to such
a white heat that it not only involved a risk of his life for a North
German to attend such a meeting, but the conclusion of such
rallies as a rule ended quite openly with mad cries of: ‘Away from
Prussia!’ — ‘Down with Prussia!’ — ‘War against Prussia!’ a
mood which a particularly brilliant representative of Bavarian
sovereign interests in the German Reichstag summed up in the
battle-cry; ‘Rather die Bavarian than rot Prussian!’

You need to have lived through the meetings of that time to
understand what it meant for me when, surrounded by a handful
of friends, I for the first time, at a meeting in the LowenbraukeUer
in Munich, offered resistance against this madness. It was war
comrades who then supported me, and perhaps you can imagine
how we felt when a mob — by far the greatest part of which had
been deserters and slackers, hanging around the reserve posts or
at home while we were defending the fatherland — lost all reason
and bellowed at us and threatened to strike us down. For me,
to be sure, these incidents had the virtue that the squad of my
loyal followers came to feel really attached to me, and was soon
sworn to live or die by my side.

These struggles, which were repeated again and again and
dragged out through the entire year of 1919, seemed to become
even sharper right at the beginning of 1920. There were meetings
— I particularly remember one in the Wagner-Saal in the Sonnen-
Strasse in Munich — in which my group, which had meanwhile
grown stronger, had to withstand grave clashes, which not seldom
ended in dozens of my supporters being mishandled, struck down,

‘Federative’ Activity

559

trampled under foot, and finally, more dead than alive, thrown
out of the halls.

The struggle which I had first taken up as an individual, sup-
ported only by my war comrades, was now continued by the
young movement as, I might also say, a sacred mission.

Today I am stiU proud to be able to say that in those days —
dependent almost entirely, on our Bavarian adherents — we
nevertheless slowly but surely put an end to this mixture of
stupidity and treason. I say stupidity and treason because,
though fuUy convinced that the mass of followers were really
nothing but good-natured fools, such simplicity cannot be at-
tributed to the organizers and instigators. I regarded them, and
today stiU regard them, as traitors bought and paid for by France.
In one case, the Dorten case,* history has already given its verdict.

What made the affair especially dangerous at that time was the
■skill with which the true tendencies were concealed, by shoving
.federalistic intentions into the foreground as the sole motive for
, this activity. But it is obvious that stirring up hatred against
Prussia has nothing to do with federalism. And a ‘federative
activity’ which attempts to dissolve or split up another federal
state makes a weird impression. An honorable federalist, for
whom quotations of Bismarck’s conception of the Reich are more
than lying phrases, would hardly in the same breath want to
separate portions from the Prussian state created or rather com-
pleted by Bismarck, let alone publicly support such separatist
endeavors. How they would have yelled in Munich if a con-
servative Prussian party had favored the separation of Franconia
from Bavaria, or actually demanded and promoted it by public
action. In all this one could only feel sorry for the honest, federal-
ist-minded souls who had not seen through this foul swindle; for
they, first and foremost, were the cheated parties. By thus com-
promising the federative idea, its own supporters were digging its
grave. It is impossible to preach sifederalistic form for the Reich,

* Dorten was state’s attorney in Wiesbaden after the World War. In 1919
he tried to establish a Rhenish Republic in collaboration with the French.
He was associatedVith Bavaran Right Wing Catholic politicians.

560

Meix Kampf

at the same time deprecating, railing, and befouling the most es-
sential section of such a state structure, namely, Prussia, and in
short, malting it, if posdble, impossToIe as a federal state.^ What
made this all the more incredible was that the fight of these so-
caUed federalists was directed precisely against that Prussia
which can least be brought into connecdon with the Xo^-ember
democrac}'. Fpr it was not aj^inst the falhers of the IT eimar Con-
stitution, who themselvc-s incidentally were for the most part
South Germans or Jews, that the \Tlifications and attacks of these
so-called ‘ federalisis’ were directed, but against the representa-
tives of the old conservalhe Prussia, hence the antipodes of the
Weimar Constitution. It must not surprise us that they took
special care not to attack the Jew, and perhaps this furnishes the
key to the solution of the whole riddle. ./

Just as before the revolution the Jew knew how to di\-ert at-
tention from his war societies, or rather from himself, and was
able to turn the masses, especially of the Bavarian people, against
Prussia, after the revolution he had somehow to cover his new
and ten times bigger campaign of pillage. And agam he suc-
ceeded, in this case in inciting the so-called ‘national elements' of
Germany against one anoihtv: conservative-mhided Bavaria against
equally conservative-thinking Prussia. And again he managed it
in the shrewdst way; he, who alone held the strings of the
Reich’s destinies, provoked such brutal and tactless excesses that
the blood of those affected could not but be brought to the boil-
ing point each time anew. Yet never against the Jew, but alwaj's
against the German brother. It was not the Berlin of four million
hard-working, producing people that the Bavarian saw, but the
rotten decaying Berlin of the foulest West End! But it was not
against this West End that his hatred turned, but against the ‘Prus-
sian’ city.

Often it could really drive you to despair.

This aptitude of the Jew for diverting public attention from
himself and occupying it elsewhere, can be studied a gain today.

In 1918 there could be no question of a systematic anti-

^ ‘ ... kurz ah Bundesstaat wenn md^ich, unmo^ich iuachi.’

Denominational Disputes

561

Semitism. I still remember the dfficulties one encountered if
one so much as uttered the word Jew. Either one was stupidly
gaped at, or one experienced the most violent resistance. Our
first attempts to show the public the real enemy then seemed al-
most hopeless, and only very slowly did things begin to take a
better turn. Bad as the. organizational set-up of the Watch and
Ward League {Schulz- und Trul^und) ^ was, it nonetheless had
great merit in having reopened the Jewish question as such. At all
events, in the winter of 1918-19, something like anti-Semitism
began slowly to take root. Later, to be sure, the National Socialist
movement drove the Jewish question to the fore in quite a dif-
ferent way.* Above all, it succeeded in lifting this problem out of
the narrow, limited circle of bourgeois and petit bourgeois strata
and transforming it into the driving impulse of a great people’s
movement. But scarcely had it succeeded in giving the German
people its great, unifying idea of struggle in this question than
the Jew commenced to counter-attack. He seized upon his old
weapon. With miraculous speed he threw the torch of discord
into the folkish movement and sowed dissension. As things then
stood, the only possibility of occupying the pubUc attention with
other questions and withholding a concentrated attack from the
Jews lay in raising the Ultramontane question, and in the resulting
clash between Catlwlicism and Protestantism. These men can
never atone for the wrong they did our people in hurling this
question into their midst. In any case the Jew reached his de-
sired goal: Catholics and Protestants wage a merry war with one
another, and the mortal enemy of Aryan humanity and all Chris-’
tendom laughs up his sleeve.

^ Deutsch-Volkischer Schulz- und Trulsbuttd, a supposedly non-political
anti-Semitic organization, founded in 1919, ostensibly to protect German
culture against Jewish influence, though anti-Semitism was not ofiicially
mentioned in its program. Its propaganda was first directed against the Jew-
ish immigrants from Russia and Poland after the war. It petered out in
1922, its members merging with the National Socialists. It introduced the
swastika to German political life.

...die Judenfrage ganz anders vorwttrtsgetriebent’

562

Mein Kampe

Just as formerly they were able to busy public opinion for
years with the struggle between federalism and centralization,
thus wearing it down with exhaustion, while the Jew sold the
freedom of the nation and betrayed our fatherland to interna-
tional high finance, now again he succeeds in causing the two
German denominations to assail one another, while the founda-
tions of both’ are corroded and undermined by the poison of the
international world Jew.

Bear in mind the devastations which Jewish bastardization
visits on our nation each day, and consider that this blood
poisoning can be removed from our national body only after
centuries, if at all; consider further how racial disintegration
drags down and often destroys the last Aryan values of our
German people, so that our strength as a culture-bearing na-
tion is visibly more and more involved in a regression and we
run the risk, in our big cities at least, of reaching the point where
southern Italy is today. This contamination of our blood,
blindly ignored by hundreds of thousands of our people, is carried
on systematically by the Jew today. Systematically these black
parasites of the nation defile our inexperienced young blond girls
and thereby destroy something which can no longer be replaced
in this world. Both, yes, both Christian denominations look on
indifferently at this desecration and destruction of a noble and
unique living creature, given to the earth by God's grace. The
significance of this for the future of the earth does not lie in
whether the Protestants defeat the Catholics or the Catholics the
Protestants, but in whether the Aryan man is preserved for the
earth or dies out. Nevertheless, the two denominations do not
fight today against the destroyer of this man, but strive mutually
to annihilate one another. The folkish-minded man, in particu-
lar, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of mak-
ing people stop just talking superficially of God’s will, and actu-
ally fulfill God’s will, and not let God’s word he desecrated.

For God’s will gave men their form, theh essence and their
abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the
Lord’s creation, the divine will. Therefore, let every man be

Denominational Disputes

563

active, each in his own denomination if you please, and let every
man take it as his first and most sacred duty to oppose anyone
who in his activity by word or deed steps outside the confines of
his religious community and tries to butt into the other. For in
Germany to attack the special characteristics of a denomination,
within the religious schism we already have with us, necessarily
leads to a war of annihilation between the two denominations.
Our conditions permit here of no comparison say \^ith France or
Spain, let alone Italy. In all three countries, for example, a fight
can be preached against clericalism or Ultramontanism, without
running the risk that in this endeavor the French, Spanish, or
Italian people as such will fall apart. In Germany, however, this
may not be done, for here it is certain that the Protestants would
also participate in such a movement. And thus the resistance,
which would elsewhere be carried on only by Catholics against
encroachments of a political nature by their own high clergy,
immediately assumes the character of an attack of Protestantism
against Catholicism. What is tolerated from members of the same
denomination, even when it is unjust, is at once sharply rejected
at the outset, as soon as the assailant belongs to another creed.
This goes so far that even men, who themselves would be perfectly
willing to correct a visible abuse within their own religious com-
munity, at once change their minds and turn their resistance out-
ward as soon as such a correction is recommended, let alone de-
manded, by a source not belonging to their community. They
regard this as an unjustified and impermissible, nay, indecent at-
tempt to mix in matters which do not concern the party in ques-
tion. Such attempts are not pardoned even if they are justified
by the higher right of the interests of the national community,
since today religious sentiments still go deeper than all considera-
tions of national and political expediency. And this is in no way
changed by driving the two denominations into an embittered
mutual war, but could only change if, through compatibility on
both sides, the nation is given a future which by its greatness
would gradually have a conciliatory effect in this province as
elsewhere.

564

Mein Kampf

I do not hesitate to declare that I regard the men who today
draw the folkish movement into the crisis of religious quarrels as
worse enemies of my people than any international Communist.
For to convert the latter is the mission of the National Socialist
movement. But anyone in its own ranks who leads it away from
its true mission is acting damnably. Whether consciously or im-
consciously is immaterial, he is a fighter for Jewish interests. For
it is to the Jewish interest today to make the folkish movement
bleed to death in a religious struggle at the moment when it is
beginning to begome a danger for the Jew. And I expressly em-
phasize the words bleed to death; for only a man without histori-
cal education can imagine that with this movement today a prob-
lem can be solved which has defied centuries and great states-
men.

For the rest, the facts speak for themselves. The gentlemen
who in 1924 suddenly discovered that the highest mission of the
folkish movement was the struggle against ‘ UUramontanism' did
not break Ultramontanism, but tore apart the folkish movement.^
I must also lodge protest against any immature mind in the ranks
of the folkish movement imagining that he can do what even a
Bismarck could not do. It will always be the highest duty of the
top leadership of the National Socialist movement to offer the
sharpest opposition to any attempt to drive the National Socialist
movement into such struggles, and immediately to remove the
propagandists of such an intention from the ranks of the move-
ment. And actueilly, by autunm, 1923, we succeeded entirely in
this. In the ranks of the movement, the most devout Protestant
could sit beside the most devout Catholic, without coming into the
slightest conflict with his religious convictions. The mighty
common struggle which both carried on against the destroyer of
Aryan humanity had, on the contrary, taught them mutually to
respect and esteem one another. And yet, in these very years, the
movement carried on the bitterest fight against the Center,
though never on religious, but exclusively on national, racial, and

* An attack on the bitterly anti-Catholic Ludendorf, who broke with
National Socialism after the putsch of November, 1923v-

Federation or Unified State?

565

economico-political grounds. The results spoke in our favor, just
as today they testify against the know-it-aJls.

In recent years things have sometimes gone so far that folkish
circles in the God-forsaken blindness of their denominational
squabbles did not even recognize the madness of their actions
from the fact that atheistic Marxist newspapers suddenly, when
convenient, became advocates of religious communities, and tried
to compromise one or the other by bandying back and forth re-
marks that were sometimes really too stupid, and thus stir up the
fire to the extreme.

Especially with a people like the Germans, who have so often
demonstrated in their history that they were capable of waging
wars down to the last drop of blood for phantoms, any such battle-
cry will be mortally dangerous. In this way our people has
always been diverted from the real practical questions of its
existence. While we devoured each other in religious squabbles,
the rest of the world was distributed. And while the folkish
movement considers whether the Ultramontane peril is greater
than the Jewish peril or vice versa, the Jew destroys the racial
foundations of our existence and thus destroys our people for all
time. As far as this variety of ‘folkish’ warriors are concerned,
I can only wish the National Socialist movement and the German
people with all my heart: Lord, protect them from such friends
and they will settle with their enemies by themselves.

# # «

The struggle between federalism and centralization so shrewdly
propagated by the Jews in 1919-20-21 and afterward, forced the
National Socialist movement, though absolutely rejecting it, to
take a position on its essential problems.

Should Germany be a federated or a unified state, and what for
practical purposes must be understood by the two? To me the
second seems the more important question, because it is not only
fimdamental tcfl;he understanding of the whde problem, but also

566

Mein Kamfe

because it is clarifying and possesses a conciliatory character.

What is a federated state?

By a federated state we understand a league of sovereign states
which band together of their own free will, on the strength of their
sovereignty; ceding to the totality that share of their particular
sovereign rights which makes possible and guarantees the exist-
ence of the copimon federation.

In practice this theoretical formulation does not apply entirely
to any of the federated states existing on earth today. Least of all
to the American* Union, where, as far as the overwhelming part
of the individual states are concerned, there can be no question of
any original sovereignty, but, on the contrary, many of them were
sketched into the total area of the Union in the course of time, so
to speak. Hence in the individual states of the American Union
we have mostly to do with smaller and larger territories, formed
for technical, administrative reasons, and, often marked out with
a ruler, states which previously had not and could not have pos-
sessed any state sovereignty of their own. For it was not these
states that had formed the Union, on the contrary it was the
Union which formed a great part of such so-called states. The
very extensive special rights granted, or rather assigned, to the
individual territories are not only in keeping with the whole
character of this federation of states, but above all with the size of
its area, its spatial dimensions which approach the scope of a
continent. And so, as far as the states of the American Union are
concerned, we cannot speak of their state sovereignty, but only of
their constitutionally established and guaranteed rights, or better,
perhaps, privileges.

The above formulation is not fully and entirely applicable to
Germany either. Although in Germany without doubt the
individual states did exist first and in the form of states, and the
Reich was formed out of them. But the very formation of the
Reich did not take place on the basis of the free will or equal par-
ticipation of the single states, but through the workings of the
hegemony of one state among them, Prussia. The great difference
between the German states, from the purely territorial stand-

Federation or Unified State?

567

point, permits no comparison with the formation of the American
Union, for instance. The difference in size between the smallest of
the former federated states and the larger ones, let alone the
largest, shows the non-similarity of their achievements, and also
the inequality of their share in the founding of the Reich, the
forming of the federated state. Actually, in most of these states
there could be no question .of a real sovereignty, except if state
sovereignty was taken only as an official phrase. In reality, not
only the past, but the present as well, had put an end to any
number of these so-called ‘sovereign states’ and thus clearly
demonstrated the weakness of these ‘sovereign’ formations.

I shall not state here how each of these states was historically
formed, but I do want to say that in practically no case do they
coincide with tribal boundaries. They are purely political
phenomena, and their roots for the most part go back to the
gloomiest epoch of the German Reich’s impotence and of the
national fragmentation which conditioned it and itself in turn
was conditioned by it.

All this, in part at least, was taken into account by the consti-
tution of the old Reich, in so far as it did not grant the individual
states the same representation in the Bundesrat,* but set up grada-
tions corresponding to size and actual importance, as well as the
achievement of the individual states in the formation of the Reich.

The sovereign rights waived by the single states to make pos-
sible the formation of the Reich were only in the smallest part
surrendered of their own free will; in the greatest part they were
either practically non-existent to begin with or were simply taken
away imder the pressure of superior Prussian power. At the same
time, Bismarck did not act on the principle of giving to the Reich
everything that could in any way be taken away from the individ-
ual states; his principle was to demand of the individual states
only what the Reich absolutely needed. A principle as moderate

^ The Bundesrat was the federal council of the North German Confedera-
tion formed in 1867, and later of the German Empire. Made up of delegates
of the various member states, it had equal powers with the Reichstag and
was a sort of uppei* house.

568

Mein Kampf

as it was wise, which on the one hand took the highest considera-
tion of custom and tradition, and on the other hand thereby
assured the new Reich a great measure of love and jojiul oillabo-
ration at the xery outset. It is absolutely wrong, however, to at-
tribute this decision of Bismarck to his conviction that the Reich
thus jiossessed sufficient sovereign rights for all time. Bismarck
had no such conviction; on the contrary, he only wanted to put
oS till the future what at the moment would have been hard to
accomplish and to endure. He put his hope in the gradual com-
promises brought about by time and the pressure of development
as such, which in the long run he credited with more strength than
any attempt to break the momentary* resistance of the individual
states at once. Thus, he best demonstrated and proved the great-
ness of his statesmanship. For in reality the sovereignty of the
Reich steadily grew at the expense of the sovereignty of the
individual states. Time fulfilled Bismarck’s expectations.

I\lth the German collapse aitd the destruction of the German
state form, this development was necessarily accelerated. For
since the existence of the individual German states was attribut-
able less to tribal foundations than to purely political causes, the
agnificance of these individual states inevitably shriveled into
nothing once the most essential embodiment of the political
development of these states, iJie momrchk siaie form and iheir
dynasties, had been excluded, h considerable number of these
‘state formations ’ lost all internal stability, to such an extent that
they voluntarily renounced any further existence and for reasons
of pure expediencj’ fused with others or merged with larger ones of
their own free will; the most striking proof of the extraordinary
weakness of these little formations and the small respect they en-
joyed even among their own citizens.

.And so. if the elimination of the monarchic state form and its
representatives in itself administered a strong blow to the Reich’s
character as a federated state, this was even more true of the
assumption of the obligations resulting from the ‘peace’ treaty.

It was natural and self-evident that the financial sovereignty
previously vested in the provinces should be lost to the Reich at

Federation or Unified State?

569

the moment when the Reich due to the lost War was subjected to
a financial obligation which would never have been met by in-
dividual contributions of the provinces. Also the further steps,
which led to the taking over of the postal service and railroads by
the Reich, were necessary effects of the enslavement of our
people, gradually initiated by the peace treaties. The Reich was
forced to take firm possession of more and more capital, in order
to be able to meet the obligations which arose in consequence of
further extortions.

Insane as the forms frequently were, in which the centralization
was accomplished, the process in itself was logical and natural.
Those to blame were the parties and the men who had not done
ever)rthing in their power to end the War victoriously. Those to
blame, especially in Bavaria, were the parties which in pursuit of
selfish aims of their own, had during the War wrung from the
principle of the Reich concessions which after its loss they had to
restore ten times over. Avenging history! Seldom, however, has
the punishment of Heaven come so swiftly after the crime as in
this case. The same parties, which only a few years previous had
placed the interests of their individual states — and this especially
in Bavaria — above the interest of the Reich, were now compelled
to look on as, beneath the pressure of events, the interest of the
Reich throttled the existence of the individual states. AH through
their own complicity.

It is an unequaled hypocrisy to bemoan to the masses of voters
(for only toward them is the agitation of our present-day parties
directed) the loss of the sovereign rights of the individual prov-
inces, while all these parties without exception outbid one an-
other in a policy of fulfillment which in its ultimate consequences
could not but lead to deep-seated changes inside Germany. Bis-
marck’s Germany was free and unbound on the outside. This
Reich did not possess financial obligations of so burdensome, and
at the same tune unproductive, a nature as the present Dawes-
Germany has to bear. But internally as well, its competence was
liimted to a few matters and those absolutely necessary. Thus,
it could very well*dispense with a financial sovereignty of its own,

570

Mein Kampf

and live from the contributions of the provinces; and it goes
without saying that, on the one hand, the continued possession
of their own sovereign rights, and, on the other hand, compara-
tively small financial contributions to the Reich, were very con-
ducive to satisfaction with the Reich ^ in the provinces^/^wever,
it is incorrect, dishonest in fact, to mahe propagandaloday with
the assertion ihat the present lack of satisfaction with the Reich
can be attributed solely to the financial bondage of the provinces to
the Reich. No, that is not the real state of affairs. The diminished
satisfaction with the Reich idea is not attributable to the loss of
sovereign rights on the part of the provinces, but is rather the result of
the deplorable way in which the German people is at present repre-
sented by Us state. Despite all the Reichsbanner ® rallies and cele-
brations in honor of the constitution, the present Reich has re-
mained alien to the heart of the people in all strata, and republi-
can protective laws may deter people from transgressing against
republican institutions, but can never win the love of so much as
a single German. In this excessive concern with protecting the Re-
public against its own citizens by means of penal laws and imprison-
ment lies the most annihilating criticism and disparagement of the
whole institution itself.

But for another reason as weU, the assertion, made by certain
parties today, that the disappearance of satisfaction in the Reich
is attributable to the encroachments of the Reich against certain
sovereign rights of the provinces, is untrue. Assuming that the
Reich had not undertaken the extension of its competencies, let
no one suppose that the love of the individual provinces for the
Reich would be any greater, if nonetheless their total contribu-
tions had to be the same as now. On the contrary: If the individ-
ual provinces today had to bear taxes to the amount which the
Reich requires for the fulfillment of the slave dictates, hostility
toward the Reich would be infinitely greater. Not only would the
contributions of the provinces to the Reich be very hard to bring
in, but they would have to be raised by means of downright coer-

^ ' Reichsfreudigkeit.' Literally: joy in the Reich.

* See page 425, note.

National State or Slave Colony? 571

cion. For since the Republic stands on the basis of the peace
treaties, and possesses neither the courage nor any intention what-
ever of breaking them, it must reckon with its obligations.
Solely to blame for this are again the parties which incessantly
harangue the patient mass of the voters about the necessary inde-
pendence of the provinces, but at the same time promote and support a
Reich policy winch must lead inevitably to the eliminalion of the very
last of these so-called 'sovereign rights.^

I say inevitably because the present Reich retains no other pos-
sibility of meeting the burdens imposed by its notorious domestic
and foreign policy. Here again one wedge drives the next, and
every new debt that the Reich heaps upon itself by its criminal
h an d ling of German interests abroad, must be balanced at home
by a stronger downward pressure which in turn requires the
gradual elimination of aU sovereign rights of the individual states,
in order to prevent germ cells of resistance from arising or merely
persisting in them.

Altogether, a characteristic difference must be noted between
the present Reich policy and that of former days: The old Reich
gave internal freedom and demonstrated strength on the outside, while
the Republic shows weakness outside and represses its citizens in-
ternally. In both cases one conditions the other: The powerful
national state needs fewer laws within in consequence of the greater
love and aitachment of its citizens; the international slave state can
only hold its subjects to their slave labor by force. For it is one of the
present regime’s most shameless impertinences to speak of ‘free
citizens.’ Only the old Germany possessed such citizens. The Re-
public is a slave colony of foreign countries and has no citizens, but
at best subjects. It therefore possesses no national flag, but only a
trade-mark, introduced and protected by official decrees and legal
measures. This s)mbol, regarded by everyone as the Gessler’s
hat of German democracy, will therefore always remain inwardly
alien to our people. The Republic which, without any feeling for
tradition and without much respect for the greatness of the past,
trod its sjmbols in the mire, will some day be amazed how super-
ficially its subjiitts are attached to its own symbols. It has

572

Mein Kampe

given to itself the character of an mtennezzo in German history.

And so today this state, for the sake of its own existence, is
obliged to curtail the sovereign rights of the individual provinces
more and more, not only out of general material considerations,
but from ideal considerations as weU. For in draining its citizens
of their last drop of blood by its policy of financial extortion, it
must inevitably withdraw their last rights if it does not want the
general discontent to break out into open rebellion some day.

By inverting the above proposition, the following rule, basic for
us National Socialists, is derived. A powerful national Reich, which
takes into account and protects the outward interests of its citizens
to the highest extent, can offer freedom within, without having to fear
for the stability of the state. On the other hand, a powerful national
government can undertake and accept responsibility for great limita-
tions on the freedom of the individual as well as the provinces, without
damage to the Reich idea if in such measures the individual citizen
recognizes a means toward the greatness of his nation.

Certainly aU the states in the world are moving toward a certain
unification in their inner organization. And in this Germany will
be no exception. Today it is ein absurdity to speak of a ‘state
sovereignty’ of individual provinces, which in reality the absurd
size of these formations in itself fails to provide. The techniques
of communication as well as administration steadily dim inis h the
importance of the individual states. Modern communications,
modem technology, make distemce and space shrink more and
more. A state of former days today represents only a province,
and the states of the present formerly seemed like continents.
The difficulty, from the purely technical point of view, of adminis-
tering a state like Germany is no greater than the difficulty in
directing a province like Brandenburg a hundred and twenty years
ago. It is today easier to span the distance from Munich to
Berlin than that from Munich to Stamberg a hundred years ago.
And the whole Reich territory of today is smaller in relation to
current communications technique than any mediiun German
federated state at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Anyone who
disregards consequences resulting from undeni^le facts cannot

Misuse oe Centralization

573

help but remain behind the times. At all times there have been
men who do this, and in the future there will be too. But they
can scarcely impede the wheel of history, and never bring it to a
standstill.

We National Socialists must never blindly disregard the conse-
quences of these truths. Here again we must not let ourselves be
taken in by the phrases of our so-called national bourgeois parties.
I use the term phrases because these parties themselves do not be-
lieve seriously in the possibility of carrying out their intentions,
and because in the second place they themselves are the accom-
plices mainly responsible for the present development. Especially
in Bavaria, the cry for the elimination of centralization is really
nothing more than a party machination without any serious
thought behind it. Every time that these parties should really
have made something serious out of their phrases, they all of them
fell down miserably. Every so-called ‘theft of sovereign rights’
from the Bavarian state by the Reich was accepted practically
without resistance except for a repulsive yelping. Indeed, if any-
one really dared to pid up serums opposition to this insane system,
he was outlawed and damned and persecuted for 'contempt of the
existing state ’ by these very parties, and in the end was silenced either
by imprisonment or illegally forbidden to speak. This more than
anything should show our supporters the inner hypocrisy of these
so-called federalistic circles. The federative state idea, like reli-
gion in part, is only an instrument for their often imclean party
interests.

« * *

Natural as a certain unification may seem, particularly in the field
of communications, for us National Socialists there nevertheless re-
mains an obligation to take an energetic position against such a
development in the present-day state, at times when Uie measures only
serve the purpose of masking and making possible a catastrophic
foreign policy. Pfecisely because the present Reich did not under-

574

Mein Kampf

take the nationalization of the railroads, postal service, finances,
etc., out of higher considerations of national policy, but only in
order to lay hands on the financial means and securities for such
a policy of unlimited fulfillment,^ we National Socialists must do
everything that seems in any way calculated to impede and if pos-
sible prevent the execution of such a policy. And to this belongs
the struggle against the present centralization of vitally important
institutions of our people, which is undertaken only in order to
raise the billions of marks and the collateral for our post-War
foreign policy. •

And for this reason the National Socialist movement has taken
a position against such attempts.

The second reason which can induce us to offer resistance to
such a centralization is that it might stabilize the power of a sys-
tem of internal government which in all its effects has brought
the gravest disaster upon the German people. The present Jewish-
Democratic Reich, which has become a true curse for the German
nation, seeks to make the criticism of the individual states, all of which
are not yet imbued with this new spirit, inefiectual, by reducing them
to total insignificance. In the face of this, we National Socialists
have every reason to attempt to give to the opposition of these
individual states, not only the foundation of a state power prom-
ising success, but in general to make their struggle against cen-
tralization into an expression of a higher, national and universal
German interest. And so, while the Bavarian People's Party en-
deavors to preserve special rights for the Bavarian State out of small-
hearted, particularistic motives, we must use this special position in
the service of a higher national interest in opposition to the present
November democracy.

The third reason that can also determine us to fight against
the current centralization is the conviction that a great part of
the so-called nationalization is in reality no unification, and in no
event a simplification, but that in many cases it is only a matter
of removing institutions from the sovereign rights of the prov-
inces, in order to open their gates to the interests of the revolu-

> Fulfillment of the peace treaties, here the reparati^ provisions.

Sovereignty or the Reich 575

tionary parties. Never in German history has there been a more
shameless policy of favoritism than under the democratic Repub-
lic. A large part of the present frenzy for centralization falls to the
account of those parties which once promised to clear the road to
ability, but when it came to filling offices and posts solely considered
party membership. Since the founding of the Republic, particu-
larly Jews in incredible numbers poured into the economic con-
cerns and administrative apparatuses snatched up by the Reich,
so that today both have become a domain of Jewish activity.

This third consideration above all must obligate us on tactical
grounds to examine sharply any further measure on the road to
centralization and if necessary to take a position against it. But
in this our motives must always be higher motives of national policy
and never petty particularistic ones.

This last remark is necessary lest the opinion arise among our
supporters that we National Socialists would not grant the Reich
as such the right to embody a higher sovereignty than that of the
individual states. Concerning this right, there must and can be no
doubt among us. Since for us the state as such is only a form, hut
the essential is its content, the nation, the people, it is clear that
everything else must be subordinated to its sovereign interests. In
particular we cannot grant to any individual state within the nation
and the state representing it state sovereignty and sovereignty in point
of political power. The mischief of individual federated states
maintainin g so-called missions abroad and among each other
must cease and will some day cease. As long as such things are
possible, we must not be surprised if foreign countries still doubt
the stability of our Reich structure and act accordingly. The mis-
chief of these missions is all the greater as not the least benefit can
be attributed to them along with the harm. The interests of a
German abroad, which cannot be protected by the ambassador of
the Reich, can much less be looked after by the envoy of a petty
state that looks ridiculous in the setting of the present world
order. In these petty federated states we can really see nothing
but points of attack for separatist endeavors inside and outside of
the German Refth, endeavors such as one state still particularly

576

Meix Kaufe

wdcomes. And we National Socialists can have no ^'mpathy
with some noble famOy, grown feeble with age, providing new soil
for a withered scion by dothing him in an ambassadorial post.
Out diplomatic missions abroad were so miserable even at the
time of the old Reich that further additions to the experience then
gained are highl}' superfluous.

In future the signiflcance of the indiddual provinces wili un-
questionably be shifted more to the field of cultural policy. The
monarch who did the most for the importance of Bavaria was not
some stubborn anti-German particuiarist, but Ludwig I, a man of
pan-German mind and artistic sensibilities. By using the forces of
the state primarily for the development of Bavaria’s cultural
p<Kition and not for the strengthening of her political power, he
built better and more enduringly than would otherwise have been
possible. By pushing Munich from the level of an insignificant
provincial capital into the format of a great German art metropo-
lis,^ he created a spiritual center which even today is strong
enough to bind the essentially different Franks to this state.
Supposing that Munich had remained what it formerly was, the
same process that took place in Saxony would have been repeated
in Bavaria, only wit’n the difference that Nuremberg, the Ba^-arian
Leipzig, would have become not a Bavarian but a Frankish cit>'.
It was not the ‘Down with Prussia’ shouters that made ilunich
great; this city was given its importance by the King who in it
wished to bestow upon the German nation an art treasure whidi
would have to be seen and respected, and which was seen and
respected. .\nd therein lies a lesson for the future. The importance
of the indhidual states will in the future no longer lie in the Helds of
siate pcrj^er and policy: I see it eiifur in the tribal field or the Hold of
cultural policy. But even here time will have a leveling effect.
The ease of modem transportation so scatters people around rbat
slowly and steadily the tribal boundaries are effaced and thus
even the cultural picture gradually b^ms to even out

* indem tr ilinthen damais ous dem Bakmen einer uxsdg bedetdetiden
pnmnstetien Residau in das Fonaal einer ffossen deuisden KunsSmetropok
kineinsckob . . *

Army and Separate States

577

The army in particular must be sharply removed from all in-
fluence of the individual states. The coming National Socialist
state must not fall into the error of the past and attribute to the
army a function which it has not and must not have. The German
army does not exist to be a school for the preservation of tribal peculi-
arities, but should rather be a school for the mutual understanding
and adaptation of all Germans. Whatever source of division there
may be in the life of the nation must be given a unifying effect by
the army. Furthermore, it must raise the individual young man
from the narrow horizon of his little province Md put him into
the German nation. He must learn to see, not the boimdaries of
his home province, but those of his fatherland; for it is these that
he will one day have to protect. It is, therefore, senseless to leave
the young German at home; the expedient thing is to show him
Germany during his period of military service. Today this is
aU the more necessary, as the young German no longer has his
years of wandering apprenticeship with their broadening effect on
his horizon. In view of this, is it not preposterous to leave, when
possible, the young Bavarian in Munich, the Frank in Nurem-
berg, the Badener in Karlsruhe, the Wiirttemberger in Stuttgart,
etc., and is it not more sensible to show the young Bavarian the
Rhine and the North Sea, the Hamburger the Alps, the East
Prussian the moimtains of Central Germany, and so on? Regional
character should remain in the detachment, but not in the garri-
son. Every attempt at centralization may encounter our disap-
proval, but that of the army never! On the contrary, even if we
welcomed no such endeavor, we should have to take pleasure in
this one. Quite aside from the fact that, in view of the size of the
present Reich army, the preservation of individual state troop
formations would be absurd, we regard the unihcation of the
Reich army that has taken place as a step which, in the future,
when a national army has been introduced, we must never again
abandon.

Moreover, a young victorious idea will have to reject any fetter
which might paralyze its activity in pushing forward its conceptions.
National Socialism ao a matter of principle, must lay claim to the j

578

Mein Kampf

right to force its principles on the whole German nation vAthmt con-
sideration of preoious federated state boundaries, and to educate it in
its ideas and conceptions. Just as the churches do not feel bound and
limited by political boundaries, no more does the National Socialist
idea feel limited by the individual stale territories of our fatherland.

The National Socialist doctrine is not the servant of individual
federated states, but shall some day become the master of the German
nation. It must determine and reorder the life of a people, and must,
therefore, imperiously claim the right to pass over boundaries drawn
by a developmeni we have rejected.

The more complete the victory of its ideas will he, the greater may he
the particular liberties it offers internally.

CHAPTER

XI

Propaganda and Organization

In sevesal eespects the year 1921 had as-
sumed a special significance for me and the movement.

After my entrance into the German Workers’ Party, I at once
took over the management of propaganda. I regarded this de-
partment as by far the most important. For the present, it was
less important to rack one’s brains over organizational questions
than to transmit the idea itself to a larger number of people.
Propaganda had to run far in advance of organization and provide
it with the human material to be worked on. Moreover, I am an
enemy of too rapid and too pedantic organizing. It usually pro-
duces nothing but a dead mechanism, seldom a living organiza-
tion. For organization is a thing that owes its existence to
organic life, organic development. Ideas which have gripped a
certain number of people will always strive for a greater order,
and a great V 2 ilue must be attributed to this inner molding. Here,
too, we must reckon with the weakness of men, which leads the
individual, at first at least, instinctively to resist a superior mind.
If an organization is mechanically ordered from above, there
exists a great danger that a once appointed leader, not yet ac-
curately evaluated and perhaps none too capable, will from
jealousy strive to prevent the rise of abler elements within the
movement. The harm that arises in such a case can, especially in
a young movement, be of catastrophic significance.

For this reasdn it is more expedient for a time to disseminate

580

Mein Kampf

an idea by propaganda from a central point and then carefully to
search and examine the gradually gathering human material for
l ^ a Hin g minds. Sometimes it wiU turn out that men inconspicu-
ous in themselves must nevertheless be regarded as bom leaders.

But it would be absolutely mistaken to regard a wealth of theoretical
knowledge as characteristic proof for the qualities and abilities of a
leader.

The opposite is often the case.

The great theoreticians are only in the rarest cases great orgaii-
izers, since the greatness of the theoretician and program-maker lies
pr imari ly in the recognition and establishment of abstractly correct
laws, while the organizer must primarily be a psychologist. He
must take people as they are and must therefore know them.
He must not overestimate them, any more than he must under-
estimate them in the mass. On the contrary, he must endeavor
to take weakness and bestiality equally into account, in order,
considering all factors, to create a formation which will be a living
organism, imbued with strong and stable power, and thus suited
to upholding an idea and paving the way for its success.

Even more seldom, however, is a great theoretician a great
leader. Much more readily will an agitator be one, something
which many who only work scientifically on the question do not
want to hear. And yet that is understandable. An agitator who
demonstrates the ability to transmit an idea to the broad masses
must always be a psychologist, even if he were only a demagogue.
Then he will still be more suited for leadership than the unworldly
theoretician, who is ignorant of people. For leading means: being
able to move masses. The gift of shaping ideas has nothing to do
with ability as a leader. And it is quite useless to argue which is
of greater importance, to set up ideals and aims for mankin d, or
to realize them. Here, as so often in life: one would be utterly
meaningless without the other. The finest theoretical insight re-
mains without piurpose and value if the leader does not set the
masses in motion toward it. And conversely, of what avail would
be all the genius and energy of a leader, if the brilliant theoretician
did not set up aims for the human struggle? Ho'^^ever, the com-

Supporters and Members

581

bination of theoretician, organizer, and leader in one person is
the rarest thing that can be found on this earth; this c ombina tion
makes the great man.

As I have already remarked, I devoted myself to propaganda in
the first period of my activity in the movement. What it had to do
was gradually to fill a small nucleus of men with the new doctrine,
and so prepare the materigl which could later furnish the first
elements of an organization. *

When a movement harbors the purpose of tearing down a world
and building another in its place, complete clarity must reign in
the ranks of its own leadership with regard to the following prin-
ciples:

Every movement will first have to sift ike human material it wins
into two large groups: supporters and members.

The function of propaganda is to attract supporters, the function
of organization to win members.

A supporter of a movement is one who declares himself to be in
agreement with its aims, a member is one who fights for them.

The supporter is made amenable to the movement by propaganda.
The member is induced by the organization to participate personally
in the recruiting of new supporters, from whom in turn members can
be developed.

Since being a supporter requires only a passive recognition of an
idea, while membership demands active advocacy and defense, to ten
supporters there will at most be one or two members.

Being a supporter is rooted only in understanding, mernberskip in
the courage personally to advocate and disseminate what has been
understood.

Understanding in its passive form corresponds to the majority of
mankind which is lazy and cowardly. Membership requires an activ-
istic frame of mind and thus corresponds only to the minority of men.

Propaganda will consequently have to see that an idea wins sup~
porters, while the organization must take the greatest care only to
make the most valuable elements among the supporters into members.
Propaganda does not, therefore, need to rack its brains with regard to
the importance 'if every individual instructed by it, with regard to

582

Mein Kampf

his ability, capacity, and understanding, or character, while the
organization mtist carefully gather from the mass of these elements
those which really make possible the victory of the rtmemenl.

* * *

Propaganda tries to force a doctrine on the whole people; the organ-
ization embraces within its scope only those who do not threaten on
psychological grounds to become a brake on the further dissemination
of the idea.

* * *

Propaganda works on the general public from the standpoint of an
idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea, while the or-
ganization achieves victory by the persistent, organic, and militatU
union of those supporters who seem willing and able to carry on the
fight for victory.

* * *

The victory of an idea will be possible the sooner, the more com-
prehensively propaganda has prepared people as a whole and the more
exclusive, rigid, and firm the organization which carries out the fight
in practice.

From this it results that the nurriber of supporters cannot be too
large, but that the number of members can more readily be too large
than too small.

• • •

If propaganda has imbued a whole people with an idea, the organ-
ization can draw the consequences with a handftd of men. Propa-
ganda and organization, in other words, supporters and members.

Propaganda and Organization

583

thus stand in a certain mutual relation. The better the propaganda
has worked, the smaller the organization can be; and the larger the
number op supporters, the more modest the number of members can be;
and vice versa: the poorer the propaganda is, the larger the organiza-
tion must be, and the smaller the host of followers of a movement re-
mains, the more extensive the number of its members must be, if it
still hopes to count on any success at all.

* * #

The first task of propaganda is to win people for subsequent
organization; the first task of organization is to win men for the
continuaiion of propaganda. The second task of propaganda is the
disruption of the existing state of affairs and the permeation of this
state of affairs with the new doctrine, while the second task of organi-
zation must be the struggle for power, thus to acMeoe the final success
of the doctrine.

* * *

The most striking success of a revolution based on a philosophy of
life will always have been achieved when the new philosophy of life as
far as possible has been taught to all men, and, if necessary, later
forced upon them, while the organization of the idea, in other words,
the movement, should embrace only as many as are absolutely re-
quired for occupying the nerve centers of the state in question.

This, in other words, means the following:

In every really great world-shaking movement, propaganda will
first have to spread the idea of this movement. Thus, it will inde-
fatigably attempt to make the new thought processes dear to the
others, and therefore to draw them over to their own ground, or
to make them uncertain of their previous conviction. Now,
since the dissemination of an idea, that is, propaganda, must have
a firm backbone, the doctrine will have to give itself a solid organ-

584

Mein Kamff

ization. The organization obtains its members from the general
body of supporters won by propaganda. The latter will grow the
more rapidly, the more intensively the propaganda is carried on,
and the latter in turn can work better, the stronger and more
powerful the organization is that stands behind it.

Hence it is the highest task of the organization to make sure
that no inner disunities within the membership of the movement
lead to a split and hence a weakening of the movement’s work;
further, that the spirit of determined attack does not die out, but
is continuously renewed and reinforced. The number of members
need not grow infinitely; on the contrary: since only a small frac-
tion of mankind is by nature energetic and bold, a movement
which endlessly enlarges its organization would inevitably be
weakened some day as a result. Organizations, in other words,
membership figures, which grow beyond a certain level gradually lose
their fighting power and are no longer capable of supporting or
utilizing the propaganda of an idea resolutely and aggressively.

The greater and more essentially revolutionary an idea is, the more
activistic its membership will become, since the revolutionary force of
a doctrine involves a danger for its supporters, which seems calculated
to keep cowardly little shopkeepers away from it. They will pri-
vately regard themselves as supporters, but decline to make a
public avowal of this by membership. By virtue of this fact, the
organization of a really revolutionary idea obtains as members only
the most active among the supporters won over by propaganda. And
precisely in this activity of a movement’s membership, guaranteed
by natural selection, lies the premise for equally active future
propaganda as well as a successful struggle for the realization of
the idea.

The greatest danger that can threaten a movement is a mem-
bership which has grown abnormally as a result of too rapid suc-
cesses. For, just as a movement is shunned by all cowardly and
egotistic individuals, as long as it has to fight bitterly, these same
people rush with equal alacrity to acquire membership when a
success of the party has been made probable or already realized
by developments ^

Limitation or Membership

585

To this it must be ascribed why ^ many victorious movements,
on the point of success, or, rather, the ultimate completion of
their will, suddenly from inexplicable inner weakness, flag, stop
fighting, and finally die out. In consequence of their first victory,
so many inferior, unworthy, and worst of all cowardly, elements
have entered their organization that these inferior people finally
achieve predominance over the militants and then force the move-
ment into the service of their own interests, lower it to the level of
their own scanty heroism, and do nothing to complete the victory
of the original idea. The fanatical zeal has been blurred, the fight-
ing force paralyzed, or, as the bourgeois world correctly puts it in
such cases : ‘ Water has been mixed with the wine.’ And when that
happens, the trees can no longer grow skyward.

It is, therefore, most necessary that a movement, for pure reasons
of self-preservation, should, once it has begun to achieve success,
immediately block enrollments and henceforth increase its organiza-
tion only with extreme caution and after the most thorough scrutiny.
Only in this way will it be able to preserve the core of the move-
ment in unvitiated freshness and health. It must see to it that,
from this point on, this core alone shall exclusively lead the movement,
that is, determine the propaganda which should lead to its universal
recognition, and, in full possession of the power, undertake the
actions which are necessary for the practical realizalion of its ideas.

It must not only occupy all the important positions of the con-
quered territory with the basic core of the old movement, but also
constitute the entire leadership. And this until the principles and
doctrines of the party have become the foimdation and content of
the new state. Only then can the reins gradually be handed over
to the special government of this state, bom of its spirit. This,
however, in turn occurs for the most part only in mutual struggle,
since it is less a question of human insight than of the play and
workings of forces which can perhaps be recognized from the first,
but cannot forever be guided.

All great movements, whether of a religious or a political nature,
must attribuie their mighty successes only to the recognition and ap-

^ ‘Dem ist es zthlUsckreibm warum . . .’

586

Mein Kampf

plicaiion of these principles, and all lasting successes in partictdar
are not even thinkable without consideration of these laws.

* * *

As director of the party’s propaganda I took much pains, not
only to prepare the soil for the future greatness of the movement,
but by an extremely radical conception in this work I also strove
to bring it about, that the party should obtain only the best ma-
terial. For the more radical and inflammatory my propaganda
was, the more this frightened weaklings and hesitant characters,
and prevented them from penetrating the primary core of our
organization. They might continue as supporters, but certainly
not with loud emphasis; they timidly concealed the fact. How
many thousands assured me at that time that they were essen-
tially in agreement with everything we said, but that under no
circumstances could they become members. The movement,
they said, was so radical that membership in it would expose
the individual to the gravest difficulties, nay, dangers, and we
shoifldn’t take it amiss if the honest, peaceable citizen should
stand aside for the present at least, even if at heart he was entirely
.with the cause.

And this was good. .

If these men, who at heart were not for the revolution, had all
come into our party at that time, and as members, we coifld re-
gard ourselves today as a pious fraternal organization, but no
longer as a young militant movement.

The live and aggressive form that I then gave to our propa-
ganda reinforced and guaranteed the radical tendency of our
movement, since now only radical people — with some exceptions
— were ready for membership.

At the same time, this propaganda had the effect that after a
short while himdreds of thousands not only believed us to be right
but desired our victory, even if personally they were too cowardly
to make sacrifices for it, let alone fight for it.

Reorganization of the Movement

587

Up to the middle of 1921 this purely propagandist activity
could stiU suffice and benefit the movement. But special events in
the midsummer of this year made it seem indicated that now,
after the slowly visible success of our propaganda, the organiza-
tion should be adapted to it and put on a par with it.

The attempt of a group of folkish lunatics to obtain the leader-
ship of the party, with the %id and support of the party chairman
of the time, led to the collapse of this little intrigue and, at a
general membership meeting, unanimously gave me the leader-
ship over the whole movement. Inunediately, ^ new by-law was
passed, transferring full responsibility to the first cha irman of
the party, eliminating committee decisions as a matter of princi-
ple, and introducing instead a system of division of labor which
has since proved its worth in the most beneficial way.

Beginning on August 1, 1921, 1 took over this inner reorganiza-
tion of the movement and in so doing found the support of a num-
ber of excellent people whom I consider it necessary to mention
in a special appendix.

In the attempt to organizationally exploit the results of propa-
ganda and thereby establish them for all time, I had to do away
with a number of previous habits and introduce principles which
none of the existing parties possessed or would even have recog-
nized.

In the years from 1919 to 1920 the movement had for leader-
ship a committee which was chosen by membership meetings,
which themselves in turn were prescribed by rule. The commit-
tee consisted of a first and second treasurer, a first and second
secretary, and at the head, a first and second chairman. Added
to these was a membeifehip secretary, the propaganda chief, and
various assisting committeemen.

Strange as it may seem, tins committee actually embodied
exactly what the party most wanted to combat, namely, parlia-
mentarianism. For it was obvious that we were involved with a
principle which from the smallest local group, through the later
districts, counties, and provinces, up to the Reich leadership,
embodied the vdry same system under which we all suffered and
today still suffer. *

588

Mkin Kampj

It was urgently necessary to bring about a change in this some
day, unless the movement, in consequence of the poor foundation
of its inner organization, were to be forever ruined and hence in-
capable of ever fulfilling its high mission.

The committee sessions, of which minutes were kept, and in
which votes were taken and decisions made by a majority, repre-
sented in reality a parliament on a, small scale. Here, too, all
personal responsibility was lacking. Here, too, the same irra-
tionality and the same unreasonableness reigned as in our great
state representative bodies- For this committee, secretaries,
treasurers, membership secretaries, propaganda chiefs, and God
knows what else were appointed, and then all of them together
were made to deliberate on every single question and decide by
vote. And so the man who was there for propaganda voted on a
matter that regarded the finance man, and he in turn voted on a
matter regarding organization, and the latter in turn on a matter
which should only have concerned the secretary, etc.

Why they bothered to appoint a special man for propaganda,
when treasurers, secretaries, membership secretaries, etc., had to
decide on questions regarding it, seems just as incomprehensible
to a healthy mind as it would be incomprehensible if in a big in-
dustrial enterprise the directors or engineers of other departments
and other branches had to decide on questions having nothing to
do with their affairs.

I did not submit to this lunacy, but after a short time stayed
away from the sessions. I did my propaganda work and let it go
at that, and I did not stand for any incompetent trying to tell me
what to do in this field. Just as, conversely, I did not interfere
in the business of the others.

When the acceptance of the new statutes and my appointment
to the position of first chairman had meanwhile given me the
necessary authority .and the rights that went with it, this non-
sense immediately stopped. In the place of committee decisions,
the principle of absolute responsibility was introduced.

The first chairman is responsible for the total leadership of the
movement. He apportions the work to be perfdrmed among the

Responsibility op the Leader 589

committeemen subordinated to him and among whatever other
collaborators are needed. And each one of these gentlemen is
absolutely responsible for the tasks transferred to him. He is
subordinated only to the first chairman, who must procure the
cooperation of all, or else must bring about this cooperation by
the choice of persons and the issuance of general directives.

This law of fundamental r^esponsibility was gradually taken for
granted within the movement, at least in so far as the party lead-
ership was concerned. In the little local groups and perhaps even
in the coimties and districts, it will take years before these prin-
ciples will be forced through, since scare-cats and incompetents
win of course always fight against it; to them sole responsibility
for an undertaking will always be unpleasant; they always felt
freer and better when in every grave decision they were covered
by the majority of a so-called committee. But to me it seems
necessary to express myself with the greatest sharpness against
such an attitude, to make no concession to cowardice in the face
of responsibility, and thereby, even if it takes a long time, to
achieve a conception of leader’s duty and leader’s ability, which
will bring to leadership exclusively those who are really called and
chosen for it.

In any case a movement that wants to combat the parliamen-
tary madness must itself be free of it. Only on such a basis can it
win the strength for its struggle.

A movement which in a time of majority rule orients itself in all
things on the principle of the leader idea and the responsibility con-
ditioned by it will some day with mathematical certainty overcome the
existing state of avoirs and emerge victorious.

This idea led to a complete reorganization within the move-
ment. And in its logical effects also to an extremely sharp division
between the business activities of the movement and the general
political leadership. As a matter of principle, the idea of re-
sponsibility was extended to all the party activities and led in-
evitably to their recovery, in exact proportion as they were freed
from political influences and adjusted to purely economic con-
siderations.

590

Mein Kampe

When in the fall of 1919, 1 joined the handful of men who then
constituted the party, it had neither a business office nor a derk,
not even forms or rubber stamps; and no printed matter existed.
The committee room was first a tavern in the Herrengasse, and
later a cafe on the Gasteig. That was an impossible state of af-
fairs. Soon afterward I started out and visited a number of Mu-
nich restaurants and taverns with thp intention of renting a back
room or some other space for the party. In the former Stemecker-
brau in the Tal, there was a small vault-like room which had
once served the imperial councilors ^ of Bavaria as a sort of tap-
room. It was dark and gloomy and thus was just as well suited
for its former purpose as it was ill-suited for its projected new use.
The alley on which its single window opened was so narrow that
even on the brightest summer day the room remained gloomy
and dark. This became our first business office. But since the
monthly rent was only fifty marks (then an exorbitant sum for
us!), we could make no greater demands and were not even in a
position to complain w'hen, before we moved in, the wall paneling,
formerly intended for the imperial councilors, was quickly tom
out, so that now the room really gave more the impression of a
funeral vault than of an office.

And yet this was an immense step forward. Slowly we obtained
electric light, even more slowly a telephone; a table and a few
borrowed chairs were brought in, finally an open book-stand, still
somewhat later a cupboard; two sideboards belonging to the land-
lord served for keeping pamphlets, posters, etc.

The previous system — that is, having the movement run by a
committee session taking place once a week — was impossible in
the long run. Only an official paid by the movement could guar-
antee the day-to-day business organization.

At the time that was very difficult. The movement still had so
few members that it took great skill to find among them a suitable
man who, making the smallest demands for his own person, could
satisfy the innumerable demands of the movement.

^ ‘die SeichsriUe von Bayem.’ Until 1918 the upper house of the Bavarian
Diet, consisting of nobility, high clergy, and other notables.

Building the Movement'

591

In the person of a soldier, named Schiissler, one of my former
comrades, the first business manager of the party was found.
At first he came to our new office only daily from six to eight o’-
clock, later from five to eight, finally every afternoon, and shortly
afterward he was taken on full time and served from morning im-
til late into the night. He was a man as conscientious as he was
upright and absolutely honest, who personally took the greatest
pains and was devoted with especial loyalty to thd* movement it-
self. Schiissler brought with him a small Adler typewriter that
belonged to him. It was the first such instrument in the service
of our movement. Later the party acquired it by installment pay-
ments. A small safe seemed necessary to safeguard the card in-
dex and the membership books from thieves. We did not acquire
it in order to deposit any large sums of money we might have had
at the time. On the contrary, everything was extremely thread-
bare, and often I contributed from my own small savings.

A year and a half later, the business office was too small, and
we moved into a new place in the Corneliusstrasse. Again it was
a tavern we moved to, but now we no longer possessed only a sin-
gle room, but three rooms and one large additional room with a
wicket-window. At the time that seemed to us like a good deal.
Here we remained imtil November, 1923. ^

Iift)ecember, 1920, we acquired the VolkiscJier Beobachter.
This paper, which, as its name indicates, stood on the whole for
folkish interests even then, was now to be transformed into the
organ of the NSDAP. At first it appeared twice a week, at the
beg inning of 1923 became a daily, and at the end of August, 1923,
it received its large format which later became well known.

As a total novice in the field of journalism, I sometimes had to
pay dearly for my experience in those days.

The mere fact that in comparison with the enormous Jewish
press there was hardly a single really significant folkish paper
gave food for thought. This, as I later ascertained any number of
times in practice, was in large part due to the unbusinesslike
management of so-called folkish enterprises in general. They
were too much'^conducted from the angle that loyalty tak^

592

Mein Kaufe

precedence over achievement. An absolutely false standpoint,
in so far as loyalty must not be an outward thing, but find its
most eminent expression in achievement. Anyone who creates
something really valuable for his people thus gives evidence of
an equally valuable loyalty, while another,, who merely displays
hjrpocritical loyalty, but in reality performs no useful services for
his people, is an enemy to any true Ipyalty. And his loyalty is a
burden to the community.

The VSlkischer Beobackter, as its very name indicates, was also
a folkish organ, with aU the advantages, and even more faults and
weaknesses, that were characteristic of folkish institutions. Hon-
est as its content was, the management of the enterprise was im-
possible from the commercial viewpoint. It, too, was run on the
assumption that folkish newspapers must be supported by folkish
contributions, instead of the principle that they must make their
way in competition with other papers and that it is indecent to
cover the negligence or mistakes of their business management
by the donations of well-situated patriots.

In any case I attempted to eliminate this state of affairs, the
objectionableness of which I had soon recognized, and luck fa-
vored me by making me acqumnted with the man who since
then, not only as business manager of the paper, but also of the
party, has performed services of the greatest value for the move-
ment. In 1914 — at the front, that is — I met Max Amann, the
present general business manager of the party (then still my su-
perior in rank). During the four years of the War, I had an
almost continuous opportunity to observe the extraordinary abil-
ity, the industry and scrupulous conscientiousness of my future
collaborator.

In midsummer of 1921, when the movement was in a grave
crisis and I could no longer be satisfied with a number of em-
ployees, and with one in fact had had the bitterest experience, I
turned to my former regimental comrade, whom chance brought
to me one day, with the request that he become business manager
of the movement. After long hesitation — Amann was hnlHing
a position with good prospects — he finally con^nted, though on

Building the Movement'

593

condition that he would never serve as a stooge for any incom-
petent committees, but would exclusively recognize a single mas-
ter.

It is the inextinguishable merit of this first business manager
of the movement, a man of really comprehensive business train-
ing, to have brought order and neatness into the party’s business
affairs. Since that time they have remained exemplary and could
be equaled, let alone surpassed, by none of the subdivisions of the
movement, but, as always in life, outstanding ability is not sel-
dom the cause of envy and disfavor. This, of qourse, had to be
expected in this case and to be taken patiently into account.

By 1922 there existed, by and large, firm directives for the
business as well as the purely organizational development of the
movement. There was already a complete central card index
which embraced all members belonging to the movement. Like-
wise the financing of the movement had been brought into healthy
channels. Current expenses had to be covered by current re-
ceipts; extraordinary receipts were used only for extraordinary
expenses. Despite the hard times, the movement thereby re-
mained, apart from small running accounts, almost free of debt,
and even succeeded in steadily increasing its resources. 'We
worked as in a private business: the employed personnel had to'
distinguish itself by achievement, and could not get by on the
strength of any of your famous ‘loyalty.’ The loyalty of every
National Socialist is demonstrated primarily by his readiness to
work, his industry and ability in accomplishing the work en-
trusted to him by the community. Anyone who does not fulfill
his duty in this should not boast of his loyalty, against which he
is actually committing an offense. 'With the utmost energy the
new business manager, in opposition to all possible influences,
upheld the standpoint that party enterprises must not be a
sinecure for supporters or members with no great enthusiasm for
work. A movement which fights in so sharp a form against the
party corruption of our present administrative apparatus must
keep its own apparatus pure of such vices. There were cases where
employees were ifaken into the administration of the newspaper,

S94

Mein Kampf

who in their previous allegiance belonged to the Bavarian Peo-
ple’s Party, but, measured by their achievements, showed them-
selves excellently qualified. The result of this attempt was in
general outstanding. By this honest and frank recognition of the
individual’s real achievement, the movement more quickly and
more thoroughly won the hearts of its employees than would
otherwise have been the case. They .later became good National
Socialists and remained so, and not only in words; they also
demonstrated it by the conscientious, regular, and honest work
which they performed in the service of the new movement. It
goes without saying that the well-qualified party comrade was
given preference over the equally qualified non-party member.
But no one obtained a position on the basis of his party member-
ship alone. The firmness with which the new business manager
upheld these principles, and gradually enforced them despite all
opposition, was later of the greatest benefit to the movement.
Through this alone was it possible, in the difficult inflation period,
when tens of thousands of businesses collapsed and thousands of
newspapers had to close, for the business leadership of the move-
ment, not only to remain above water and fulfill its tasks, but for
the Volkischer Beobachter to be expanded more and more. It
had entered the ranks of the great newspapers.

The year 1921 had, furthermore, the significance that I gradu-
ally succeeded, through my position as chairman of the party, in
withdrawing the various party services from the criticism and
interference of dozens of committee members. This was impor-
tant, because it was impossible to obtain a really capable mind
for a job if incompetents kept on babbling and interfering, know-
ing everything better than anyone else and actually creating a
hopeless muddle. Whereupon, to be sure, these know-it-alls
usually withdrew quite modestly, to seek a new field for their in-
spiring supervisory activity. There were men who were possessed
by a positive disease for finding something behind anything and
everything, and who were in a kind of continuous pregnancy with
excellent plans, ideas, projects, methods. Their highest and most
ideal aim was usually the formation of a committee or controlling

Building the Movement.

595

organ to put its expert nose into other people’s serious work.
It never dawned on many of these committee people how insult-
ing and how un-National Socialist it is, when men who do not
understand a thing keep interfering with real specialists. In any
case, I regarded it as my duty in these years, to take aU real work-
ers, charged with responsibility in the movement, under my pro-
tection against such elements, to cover them in the rear, as it
were, so as to leave them frfie to work forward. «

The best means for making harmless such committees, who did
nothing and only cooked up decisions that could not be practi-
cally carried out, was to assign them to some r^al work. It was
laughable how silently one of these clubs would then disappear,
and suddenly was impossible to locate. It made me think of our
greatest institution of the sort, the Reichstag. How all its mem-
bers would suddenly evaporate if, instead of talk, some real work
were assigned to them; and particularly a task which every single
one of these braggarts would have to perform with personal
responsibility.

Even then I always raised the demand that, in the movement
as everywhere in private life, we keep looking until the obviously
capable official, administrator, or director for the various business
sections had been found. And this man was then to receive un-
conditional authority and freedom of action downward, but to
be charged with unlimited responsibility upward, and no one ob-
tains authority toward subordinates who does not know the work
involved better than they. In the course of two years, I enforced
my opinion more and more, and today it is taken for granted in
the movement, at least in so far as the top leadership is con-
cerned.

The visible success of this attitude was shown on November 9,
1923 : when I came to the movement four years previous, not even
a rubber stamp was available. On November 9, the party was
dissolved, its property confiscated. This, including all properties
and the newspaper, already amoimted to over a hundred and
seventy thousand gold marks.

CHAPTER

XII

The Trade-Union Question

T

JL HE RAPID GROWTH of the movement
compelled us in 1922 to take a position on a question which even
today is not entirely solved.

In our attempts to study those methods which could most
easily open up to the movement the way to the hearts of the
masses, we always encountered the objection that the worker
could never be entirely with us because the defense of his inter-
ests in the purely occupational and economic field lay in the
hands of our enemies and their organizations.

This objection, of course, had much to be said for it. It was a
matter of general belief that the worker who was active in a
factory could not even exist unless he became a member of a
union. Not only that his occupational interests seemed protected
by this alone, but his position in the factory for any length of
time was conceivable only as a union member. The majority
of the workers were organized in trade unions. These, on the
whole, had fought out the wage struggles and concluded the
agreements which assured the worker of a certain income.
Without doubt the results of these, strug^es benefited all the
workers in the factory, and inevitably conflicts of conscience
arose, especially for the decent man, if he pocketed the wage
which the unions had won him , but remained aloof from the
struggle.

It was hard to speak of these problems yjth the average

Are Trade Unions Necessary?

597

bourgeois employer. They neither had (or perhaps wanted to
have) any imderstanding for the material side of the question
nor for the moral side. Finally, their own supposed economic
interests argue from the start against any organizational group-
ing of the workers under them, and for this reason alone most
of them can hardly form an unprejudiced judgment. Here, as
so often, it is therefore necessary to turn to outsiders who do not
succumb to the temptation of not seeing the forest for the trees.
These, with good wiU, will much more easily achieve understand-
ing for a matter which in any event is among th^most important
of our present and future life.

In the first volume I have expressed myself with regard to the
nature and purpose, and the necessity, of trade unions. There I
espoused the viewpoint that, as long as no change in the attitude
of employer to worker is brought about either by state measures
(which for the most part, however, are fruitless) or by a uni-
versal new education, there remains nothing for the worker to do
but stand on his rights as an equal contracting party and defend
his own interests in economic life. I further emphasized that
safeguarding his interests in this way was entirely compatible
with a whole national community if it can prevent social in-
justices which must subsequently bring about excessive damage
to the entire community of a people. I further declared that this
necessity must be considered to prevail as long as there exist
among employers men who, left to themselves, not only have no
feeling for social duties, but not even for the most primitive
human rights; and from this i drew the inference that, once
such a self-defense is regarded as necessary, its form can reason-
ably exist only in a grouping of workers on a trade-vmion basis.

And in the year 1922 nothing changed in this general concep-
tion of mine. But now it was necessary to seek a clear and
definite formulation of our attitude toward these problems. It
was not acceptable to content ourselves in future with mere
knowledge; it was necessary to draw practical inferences from it.

We required the answer to the following questions:

1. Are trade unions nec^sary?

598

Mein Kampe

2. Should the NSDAP itself engage in trade-union activity or
direct its members to such activity in any form?

3. Whai must be the nature of a National Socialist trade union?
What are our tasks and aims?

4. How shall we arrive at such unions?

I believe that I have adequately answered the first question.
As things stand today, the trade unions in my opinion cannot be
dispensed with. On the contrary, they are among the most im-
portant institutions of the nation’s economic life. Their signifi-
cance lies not only in the social and political field, but even more
in the general field of national politics. A people whose broad
masses, through a sound trade-union movement, obtain the
satisfaction of their living requirements and at the same time an
education, will be tremendously strengthened in its power of
resistance in the struggle for existence.

Above all, the trade unions are necessary as foundation stones
of the future economic parliament or chambers of estates.

The second question, too, is easy to answer. If the trade-union
movement is important, it is dear that National Socialism must
take a position on it, not only from the purely theoretical, but
from the practical viewpoint as well. Yet, to be sure, the how of
it is harder to clarify.

The National Socialist movement, which envisions the National
Socialist folkish state as the aim of its activity, cannot doubt that
all future institutions of this state some day to be must grow out
of the movement itself. It is the greatest error to believe that
suddenly, once we have power, we can undertake a definite re-
organization out of the void, unless we previously possess a cer-
tain basic stock of men who above all have been educated with
regard to loyalty. Here, too, the principle applies that more im-
portant than the outward form, which can be created mechani-
cally and very quickly, remains the spirit which fills such a form.
For instance, it is quite possible dictatorially to graft the leader
principle on a state organism by command. But it will only be
alive if it has gradually taken shape from smallest beginnings
in a development of its own, and, by the constai^ selection which

National Socialist UmbNS

599

life’s hard reality incessantly performs, has obtained in the course
of many years the leader material necessary for the execution of
this principle.

And so we must not imagine that we can suddenly pull the
plans for a new state, form out of a briefcase into the light of day
and ‘ introduce’ them by decree from above. Such a thing can be
attempted, but the result will surely be incapable of survival, in
most cases a stillbom child. This reminds me of the beginning of
the Weimar regime and the attempt to present the German
people with not only a new regime, but a new iflag which had no
inner bond with the experience of our people in the last half
century.

The National Socialist state must beware of such experiments.
It can, when the time comes, only grow out of an organization
that has long existed. This organization must possess National
Socialist life innate within itself, in order to finally create a
living National Socialist state.

As already emphasized, the germ cells for the economic cham-
bers will have to reside in bodies representing the most varied
occupations, hence above all in the trade unions. And if this
future body representing the estates and the central economic
parliament are to constitute a National Socialist institution,
these important germ cells must also embody a^^National Socialist
attitude and conception. The institutions of the movement are
to be transferred to the state, but the state cannot suddenly
conjure up the required institutions from the void, unless they
are to remain utterly lifeless structures.

From this highest standpoint alone, the National Socialist
movement must recognize the necessity of a trade-union activity
of its own.

It must, furthermore, do so because a truly National Socialist
education of employers as well as workers, in the sense of an
integration of both into the common framework of the national
community, does not come about through theoretical instruction,
proclamations, or remonstrances, but through the struggle of
daily life. In it find through it the movement must educate the

600

Mein Kaupe

various great economic groups and bring them closer to one
another on the main issues. Without such preliminary work, all
hope that a true national community will some day arise remains
pure illusion. Only the great philosophical ideal for which the
movement fights can slowly form that universal style which will
some day make the new era seem really solidly founded within,
and not just outwardly manufactureji.

And so the movement must not only take an affirmative atti-
tude toward the idea of the trade union as such, but it must by
practical participation impart to the multitudes of its * members
and supporters the necessary education for the coming National
Socialist state.

The answer to the third question follows from what has previ-
ously been said.

T}te National Socialist trade union is no organ of class struggle,
but an organ for representing occupational interests. The National
Socialist state hnows no ‘classes/ but politically speaking only
citizens with absolutely equal rights and accordingly equal general
duties, and, alongside of these, state subjects who in the political
sense are absolutely without rights.

The trade imion in the National Socialist sense does not have
the function of grouping certain people within a national body
and thus gradually transforming them into a class, to take up
the fight against other similarly organized formations. We can
absolutely not impute this function to the trade union as such;
it became so only in the moment when the trade union became
the instrument of Marast struggle. Not the trade union is char-
acterized by class struggle; Marxism has made it an instrument for
the Marxist class struggle. Marrism created the economic weapon
which the intemational world Jew uses for shattering the eco-
nomic base of the free, independent national states, for the
destruction of their national industry and their national com-
merce, and, accordingly, the enslavement of free peoples in the
service of supra-state world finance Jewry.

* This confusion of pronouns exists in the German. ‘Its’ refers, of course,
to the trade unions. *

National Socialist Employees and Workers 601

In the face of this, the National Socialist trade union must, by
organizationally embracing certain groups of participants in the
naiional economic process, increase the security of the national
economy itself and intensify its strength by the corrective elimination
of all those abuses which in their ultimate consequences have a de-
structive effect on the naiional body, injure the vital force of the
national community, and heyce also of the state, and last but not
least redound to the wrack and ruin of the economy itself.

Hence, for the National Socialist union the strike is not a means
for shattering and shaking national production,, but for enhanc-
ing it and making it run smoothly by combating aU those abuses
which, due to their unsocial character, interfere with the efficiency
of the economy and hence the existence of the totality. For the
efficiency of the individual always stands in a casual connection
with the general legal and social position that he occupies in the
economic process and with his understanding, resulting from this
alone, of the necessity that this process thrive for his own ad-
vantage.

The National Socialist worker must know that the prosperity of
the national economy means his own material happiness.

The National Socialist employer must know that the happiness
and contentment of his workers is the premise for the existence and
development of kis own economic greatness.

National Socialist workers and National Socialist employers are
both servants and guardians of the national community as a whole.
The high degree of personal freedom that is granted them in their
activity can be explained by the fact that, as experience shows,
the efficiency of the individual is increased much more by far-
reaching freedom than by compulsion from above, and, further-
more, it is calculated to prevent the natural process of selection,
which advances the most efficient, capable, and industrious from
being thwarted.

For the National Socialist union, therefore, the strike is an
instrument which may and actually must be applied only so long
as a National Socialist folkish state does not exist. This state,
to be sure, must, in place of the mass struggle of the two great

602

Mein Kampe

groups — employers and workers — (which in its consequences
always injures the national community as a whole by diminishing
production) assume the legal care and the legal protection of all.
Upon the economic chambers themselves it will be incumbent to
keep the national economy functioning and eliminate the de-
ficiencies and errors which damage it. The things for which
millions fight, and struggle today must in time be settled in
the chambers of estates and the central economic parliament. Then
employers and workers will not rage against one another in strug-
gles over pay and wage scales, damaging the economic existence
of both, but solve these problems jointly in a higher instance,
which must above all constantly envision the welfare of the
people as a whole and of the state, in gleaming letters.

Here, too, as everywhere, the iron principle must prevail that
first comes the fatherland and then the party.

The function of the National Socialist imion is the education
and preparation for this aim itself, which is: All working together
for the peseraation and safeguarding of our people and our state,
in accordance with the abilities and strength innate in the individual
and trained by the national community.

The fourth question: How do we arrive at such unions? seemed
at the time by far the hardest to answer.

It is in general easier to found an institution on new soil than
in an old territory that already possesses a similar institution. In
a town where no store of a certain type is present, it is easy to
establish such a store. It is harder when a simil ar enterprise
already is present, and hardest of all when the conditions are
such that only one alone can prosper. For here the founders face
the task of not only introducing their own business, but they
must, in order to exist, destroy the one that has previously
existed in the town.

A National Socialist union side by side with other unions is
senseless. For it, too, must feel itself permeated by its philo-
sophical task and the resultant obligation to be intolerant of
other similar, let alone hostile, formations and to emphasize the
exclusive necessity of its own ego. Here, too, ^ere is no under-

No Dual Unions

603

standing and no compromise with related efforts, but only the
maintenance of our absolute sole right.

There were two ways of arriving at such a development:

(1) We could found a trade union and then gradually take up the
struggle against the international Marxist unions; or we could

(2) penetrate the Marxist unions and try to Jill them with the

new spirit; in other words, transform them into instruments of
the new ideology. '

To the first method there were the following objections: Our
financial difficulties at that time were still very considerable,
the means that stood at our di^osal were quite insignificant.
The gradually and increasingly spreading inflation made the
situation even more difficult, since in those years one could hardly
have spoken of any tangible benefit to the member from the trade
union. The individual worker, viewed from his own standpoint,
had no ground at that time to pay dues to the union. Even the
already existing Marxist unions were on the point of coUapse
imtil suddenly, through Herr Cimo’s brilliant Ruhr action, the
millions feU into their lap. This so-called ‘national’ chancellor
may be designated as the savior of the Marxist unions.

At that time we could not count on such financial possibilities;
and it could allure no one to enter a new union which, owing to
its financial impotence, could not have offered him the least
benefit. On the other hand, I must sharply oppose creating such
an organization as a soft spot for more or less great minds to take
refuge in.

All in all, the question of personalities played one of the most
important parts. At that time I had not a single personality
whom I would have held capable of solving this gigantic task.
Anyone who at that time would really have shattered the Marxist
unions, and in place of this institution of destructive class struggle,
helped the National Socialist trade-union idea to victory, was among
the very g/eat men of our people, and his bust wotdd some day have
had to be dedicated to posterity in the Valhalla at Regensburg.

But I did not know of any head that would have fitted such a
pedestal.

604

Mein E.ampe

It is absolutely wrong to be diverted from this view by the fact
that the international trade unions themselves have only average
minds at their disposal. This in reality means nothing at all;
for at the time when they were founded, there was nothing else.
Today the National Socialist movement must combat a colossal
gigantic organization which has long been in existence, and which
is developed down to the slightest detail. The conqueror must
always be mote astute than the defender if he wants to subdue
him. The Marxist trade-imion fortress can today be administered
by ordinary bosses; but it will only be stormed by the wild energy
and shining ability of an outstanding great man on the other side.
If such a man is not found, it is useless to argue with Fate and
even more useless to attempt forcing the matter with inadequate
substitutes.

Here we must apply the maxim that in life it is sometimes better
to let a thing lie for the present than to begin it badly or by
halves for want of suitable forces.

There was also another consideration which should not be
designated as demagogic. I had at that time and still possess
today the unshakable conviction that it is dangerous to tie up a
great politico-philosophical struggle with economic matters at
too early a time. This is particularly true with our German
people. For here, in such a case, the economic struggle will at
once withdraw the energy from the political struggle. Once
people have won the conviction that by thrift they can acquire
a little house, they will dedicate themselves only to this task and
will have no more time to spart for the political struggle agamst
those who are planning to take away their saved-up pennies some
day in one way or another. Instead of fighting in the political
struggle for the insight and conAdction they have won, they give
themselves up entirely to their idea of ‘settlement,’ and in the
end as a rule find themselves holding the bag.

The National Socialist movement today stands at the begin-
ning of its struggle. In large part it has still to form and complete
its philosophical picture. It must fight with all the fiber of its
energy for the accomplishment of its great ideas, and success

The Philosophical Sthuggle Comes First (505

is thinkable only if all its strength goes completely into the
service of this fight.

To what an extent concern with purely economic problems can
paralyze active fighting strength, we can see at this very moment
in a classical example:

The resolution of November, 1918, was not made by trade unions,
but was accomplished against them. And the German bourgeoisie
is carrying on no political struggle for the German future because it
believes this future to be sufficiently guaranteed by the constructive
work in the economic sphere. ,

We should learn from such experiences; for it would be no
different with us. The more we muster the entire strength of our
movement for the political struggle, the sooner may we count
on success all along the line; but the more we prematurely burden
ourselves with trade-union, settlement, and similar problems, the
smaller will be the benefit for our cause taken as a whole. For
important as these matters may be, their fulfillment will only
occur on a large scale, when we are in a position to put the state
power into the service of these ideas. Until then, these problems
would paralyze the movement all the more, the sooner it con-
cerned itself with them and the more its philosophical will was
limited by them. Then it might easily come about that trade-wtion
motives would guide the movement instead of the philosophy forcing
the trade union into its channels.

Real benefU for the movement as well as our people can only arise
from a trade-union movement, if philosophically this movement is
already so strongly filled with our National Socialist ideas that it no
longer runs the risk of falling into Marxist tracks. For a trade-utdon
movement which sees its mission only in competition imth the Marx-
ist unions would be worse than none at all. It must declare war
on the Marxist union, not only as an organization, but above all
as an idea. In the Marxist union it must strike down the herald
of the class struggle and the dass idea and in its stead must be-
come the protector of the occupational interests of German
citizens.

All these criteria then argued and still argue against the foun-

• •

<506

Mein Kampe

dation of our mm trade unions, unless suddenly a man should
appear who is obviously chosen by Fate for the solution of this
very question.

And so there were only two other possibilities: either to
recommend that our own party comrades leave the unions, or
that they remain in them and work as destructively as possible.

In general I recommended this latter way.

Especially in the year 1922-23 this could be done without
diffictilty; for the financial benefit which during the inflation
period accrued -to the trade union from oiu- members in their
ranks, who due to the youth of our movement were not yet very
numerous, was practically nil. But the damage to it was very
great, for the National Socialist supporters were its sharpest
critics and thus its inner disrupters.

At that time I totally rejected all experiments which contained
the seeds of failmre to begin with. I would have viewed it as a
crime to take so and so much of a worker’s meager earnings for
an institution of whose benefit to its members I was at heart not
convinced.

If one fine day a new political party disappears, it is scarcely
ever a loss but almost always a benefit, and no one has any right
to moan about it; for what the individual gives to a political
movement, he gives dfonds perdu. But anyone who pays money
into a union has a right to the fulfillment of the promised return
services. If this is not taken into account, the leaders of such a
union are swindlers, or at least frivolous characters who must be
called to account.

And in 1922 we acted according to this view. Others thought
they knew better and founded trade unions. They attacked our
lack of unions as the most visible sign of our mistaken and limited
views. But it was not long before these organizations themselves
vanished, so that the final result was the same as with us. Only
with the one difference, that we had deceived neither ourselves
nor others.

CHAPTER

XIII

German Alliance Policy After the War

T

X BE HEEDLESSNESS of the leaders of the
Reich’s foreign policy when it came to establishing basic princi-
ples for an expedient alliance policy was not only continued
after the revolution but was even exceeded. For if before the
War general confusion of political concepts could be regarded as
the cause of our faulty leadership in foreign policy, after the
War it was a lack of honorable intentions. It was natural that
the circles who saw their destructive aims finally achieved by
the revolution could possess no interest in an alliance policy
whose final result would inevitably be the re-establishment of a
free German state. Not only that such a development would
have run counter to the inner sense of the November crime, not
only that it would have interrupted or actually ended the inter-
nationalization of the German etonomy: but also the domestic
political effects resulting from a victorious fight for freedom in
the field of foreign policy would in the future have meant doom
for the present holders of power in the Reich. For the resurrec-
tion of a nation is not conceivable without its preceding na-
tionalization, as, conversely, every great success in the sphere of
foreign affairs inevitably produces reactions in the same direc-
tion. Every fight for freedom, as experience shows, leads to an
intensification of national sentiment, of self-reliance, and hence
also to a sharper' sensibility toward anti-national elements and

608

Mein KAiipr

tendencies. Conditions and persons who are tolerated in peace-
able times, who often, in fact, pass unnoticed, are not only re-
buffed in times of seething national enthusiasm, but encounter a
resistance that is not seldom fatal to them. Just recall, for ex-
ample, the general fear of spies which at, the outbreak of wars
suddenly bursts forth in the fever heat of human passions and
leads to the most brutal, sometimes even unjust persecutions,
though everybne might teU himself that the danger of spies will
be greater in the long years of a peaceful period, even though, for
obvious reasons,, it does not receive general attention to the samp
extent.

For this reason alone the subtle instinct of the government
parasites washed to the surface by the November events senses
that an uprising of our people for freedom, supported by an
intelligent alliance policy and the resultant outburst of national
passions, would mean the possible end of their own criminal
existence.

Thus, it becomes understandable why the government authori-
ties in power since 1918 have failed us in the field of foreign
affairs and why the leaders of the state have almost always
worked systematically against the real interests of the German
nation. For what at first sight might appear planless is revealed
on closer examination as merely the logical continuation of the
road which the November revolution for the first time openly
trod.

Here, to be sure, we must distinguish between the responsible
or rather ‘should-be-responsibl6’ leaders of our state affairs, the
average parliamentary politicasters, and the great stupid sheep’s
herd of patient lamblike people.

The first know what they want. The others play along, eit h e r
because they know it or are too cowardly to ruthlessly oppose
what they have recognized and fdt to be harmful. And the others
submit from incomprehension and stupidity.

As long as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party pos-
sessed only the scope of a small and little known dub, problems
of foreign policy could possess only a subordinate importance in

Aim of Foreign Policy

609

the eyes of many adherents. This especially because our move-
ment in particular has always upheld and must always uphold
the conception that external freedom comes neither as a gift
from heaven nor from earthly powers, but can only be the fruit
of development of inner strength. (My the elimination of the
causes of our collapse, as well as the destruction of its beneficiaries,
can create the premise for our^ ouinsard fight for freedom.

And so it is understandable if, due to such considerations, in
the first period of the young movement the value of questions of
foreign policy was set below the importance of its.domestic reform
plans.

But once the limits of the small, insignificant club were broad-
ened and finally broken, and the young formation obtained the
importance of a big organization, the necessity arose of taking a
position on the questions pertaining to the developments in
foreign affairs. It became necessary to lay down guiding princi-
ples which would not only not contradict the fundamental views
of our world concept, but actually represent an emanation of
this line of thought.

Precisely from our people’s lack of schooling in foreign affairs,
there results for the young movement an obligation to transmit
to the individual leaders as well as the great masses through broad
guiding principles a line of thought in matters of foreign policy,
which is the premise for any practical execution in the future
of the preparations in the field of foreign policy for the work of
recovering the freedom of our people as well as a real sovereignty
of the Reich. *

The essential fundamental and guiding principle, which we
must always bear in mind in judging this question, is that foreign
policy is only a means to an end, and that the end is solely the
promotion of our own nationality. No consideration of foreign
policy can proceed from any other criterion than this: Does it
benefit our nationality now or in the future, or will it be injurious
to it?

This is the sole preconceived opinion ^ permissible in dealing

^ 'die eitaige vorgetasste Meinung . . .’

610

Mein Kampe

with this question. Partisan, religious, humanitarian, and all
other criteria in general, are completely irrdevant.

If before the War the task of a Oerman foreign policy was to
safeguard the sustenance of our people and its children on this
globe by the preparation of the roads that can lead to this goal,
as well as the winning of the necessary helpers in the form of
expedient allies, today it is the same, with the single difference:
Before the War, it was a question of helping to preserve the German
nationality, taking into account the existing strength of the inde-
pendent power state, today it is necessary first to restore to the nation
its strength in the form of a free power state, which is the premise for
the subsequent implementation of a practical foreign policy which
will preserve, promote, and sustain our people for the future.

In other words: The aim of a German foreign policy of
; today must be the preparation for the reconquest of free-
, dom for tomorrow.

And here a fundamental principle must always be kept in
mind: The possibility of regaining independence for a nationality is
not absolutely bound up with the integrity of a state territory, but
rather with the existence of a remnant, even though small, of this
people and state, which, in possession of the necessary freedom, not
only can embody the spiritual community of the whole nationality,
but also can prepare the military fight for freedom.

When a nation of a hundred million people, in order to preserve
its state integrity, suffers the yoke of slavery in common, it is
worse than if such a state and such a people had been shattered
and only a part of them remained in possession of full freedom.
On condition, to be sure, that this last remnant were filled with
the holy mission of not only proclmming its spiritual and cul-
tural inseparability, but also of accomplishing the military prepa-
ration for the final liberation and reunion of the unfortunate
oppressed portions.

Faulty Continental Policy Before the War 611

It should further he home in mind that the question of regaining
lost sections of a peoples and state's territory is always primarily
a question of regaining the political power and independence of the
mother country; that, therefore, in such a case the interests of lost
territories must he ruthlessly subordinated to the interest of regaining
the freedom of the main territory. For the liberation of oppressed,
separated splinters of a nationality or of provinces of a country does
not take place on the basis "of a desire on the part*of the oppressed
people or of a protest on the part of those left behind, but through
the implements of power of those remnants of the former common
fatherland that are still more or less sovereign.

Therefore, the presupposition for the gaining of lost territories
is the intensive promotion and strengthening of the remaining
remnant state and the unshakable decision slumbering in the
heart to dedicate the new force thus arising to the freedom and
unification of the entire nationality in the proper hour; therefore,
subordination of the interests of the separated territories to the
single interest of winning for the remaining remnant that measure
of political power and strength which is the precondition for a
correction of the wiU of hostile victors. For oppressed territories
are led hack to the bosom of a common Reich, not by flaming protests,
but by a mighty sword.

To forge this sword is the task of a country’s internal political
leadership; to safeguard the work of forging and seek comrades in
arms is the function of diplomatic leadership.

* * *

In the first volume of this work I have discussed the half-
heartedness of our alliance policy before the War. Of the four
roads to a future preservation of our nationality and its suste-
nance, the fourth and least favorable was chosen. In place of a
healthy European land policy, a colonial and commercial policy
was chosen. This was all the more fallacious as it was thought
that an armed-’settlement could in this way be avoided. The.j

612

Mein Kampf

result of this attempt to sit on several chairs was the proverbial
fall between them, and the World War was only the last
reckoning submitted the Reich for its faulty conduct of foreign
affairs.

The correct road would even then have, been the third: a
strengthening of our continental power by gaining new soil in
Europe, and precisely this seemed to place a completion by later
acquisitions of cblonial territory within the realm of the naturally
possible. This policy, to be sure, could only have been carried
out in alliance with England or with so abnormal an emphasis
on the military implements of power that for forty or fifty years
cultural tasks would have been forced into the background.
This would have been quite justifiable. The cultural importance
of a nation is almost always bound up with its political freedom
and independence; therefore, the latter is the presupposition for
the existence, or, better, the establishment, of the former. There-
fore, no sacrifice can be too great for the securing of political
freedom. What general cultural matters lose through an exces-
sive promotion of the state’s implements of military power, it
will later be possible to restore most abundantly. Yes, it may
be said that, after such a concentrated exertion in the sole direc-
tion of preserving state independence, a certain relaxation or
compensation customarily ensues in the form of a really amazing
golden age of the hitherto neglected cultural forces of a nation.
From the hardships of the Persian Wars arose the Age of Pericles,
and through the cares of the Punic Wars the Roman state began
to dedicate itself to the service of a higher culture.

To be sure, such a complete subordination of all a nation’s
other interests to the sole task of preparing a coming contest of
arms for the future security of the state cannot be entrusted to
the decision of a majority of parliamentary idiots or good-for-
nothings. The father of a Frederick the Great was able to pre-
pare for a contest of arms, disregarding all other concerns, but
the fathers of our democratic parliamentary nonsense of the
Jewish variety cannot do so.

For this very reason the military preparatiorf’for an acquisi-

Present Ettropean Relations of Power 613

tion of land and soD in Europe could be only a limited one, and
the support of suitable allies could hardly be dispensed with.

Since, however, our leaders wanted to know nothing of a sys-
tematic preparation for war, they renounced the acquisition of
land in Europe and, by turning instead to a colonial and com-
mercial policy, sacrificed the alliance with England which would
otherwise have been possible, but did not, as would have been
logical,' seek the support of Russia, and finally, 'forsaken by all
except the Habsburg hereditary evil, stumbled into the World
War.

* « *

In characterizing our present foreign policy, it must be said
that there exists no ■visible or even intelligible line. Before the
War the fourth road was erroneously taken, and that pursued
only by halves, while since the revolution no road at all has been
discernible, even to the sharpest eye. Even more than before
the War, any systematic thought is lacking, except perhaps an
attempt to smash the last possibility of a resurrection of our
people.

A cool appraisal of the present European relations of power
leads to the following conclusion:

For three hundred years the history of our continent has been
basically determined by the attempt of England to obtain the
necessary protection in the rea# for great British aims in world
politics, indirectly through balanced, mutually interlocking rela-
tions of power.

The traditional tendency of British diplomacy, which in
Germany can only be compared ■with the tradition of the Prussian
army, was, since the efforts of Queen Elizabeth, directed solely
toward preventing by all possible means the rise of any European
great power above its place in the general hierarchy, and, if
possible, to break it by military intervention. The instruments
of power which ^England was accustomed to apply in this case

614

Mein Kampe

varied according to the existing or presented task; * but the de-
termination and will power for using them were always the same.
Indeed, the more difficult England’s situation became in the
course of time, the more necessary it seemed to the leaders of
the British Empire to keep the individual state powers of Europe
in a state of general paralysis resulting from mutual rivalries.
The political separation of the form^ North American colonial
territory led, in the ensuing period, to the greatest exertions to
keep the European rear absolutely covered. And so — after the
destruction of Spain and the Netherlands as great sea powers —
the strength of the English was concentrated against aspiring
France until finally, with the fall of Napoleon, the danger to
England of this most dangerous military power’s hegemony
could be regarded as broken.

The shift of British policy against Germany was undertaken
only slowly, not only because, due to the lack of a national uni-
fication of the German nation, a visible danger for England did
not exist, but also because public opinion, prepared by propa-
ganda for a particular political goal, is slow in following new aims.
The sober knowledge of the statesman seems transposed into
emotional values which are not only more fruitful in their mo-
mentary efficacy, but also more stable with regard to duration.
Therefore the statesman, after achieving one purpose, can with-
out further ado turn his thought processes toward new goals,
but it will be possible to transform the masses emotionally into
an instrument of their leader’s new view * only by slow propa-
gandist efforts.

As early as 1870-71, England had meanwhile formulated hei

^ ‘noth der vorhandenen oder gestelUen Aufgabe.’ Second edition reads:
*nach der vorhandenen Lage oder, etc.’ (according to the existing situation or
the task presented).

* ‘zum Instrument der neuen Ansicht Hires Letters.' Second edition puts it
more modestly. ‘Letters’ has been changed to ‘Lebens’: the new view of
their life. This doesn’t quite make sense, but like many of the other correc-
tions was apparently made with a view to avoid resetting the paragraph.
As it happens, the same plates were not used in the sect^d edition, but per-
haps this was not the original intention.

England and Germany '

615

new position. Fluctuations which occurred at times, due to the
importance of America in world economy as well as Russia’s
development as a political power, were unfortunately not utilized
by Germany, so that a steady intensification of the original tend-
ency in British statesmanship was bound to result.

England saw in Germany the power whose importance in
commercial and hence in world politics, not least as a result of
her enormous industrialization, was increasing W such a menac-
ing extent that the strength of the two states in identical fields
could already be balanced. The ‘peaceful, economic' conquest
of the world which to the helmsmen of our state seemed the
highest emanation of the ultimate wisdom, became for the
English politicians the ground for the organization of resistance
against us. That this resistance assumed the form of a compre-
hensively organized attack was fuUy in keeping with the essence
of a diplomacy whose aims did not lie in the preservation of a
questionable world peace, but in the reinforcement of British
world domination. That England used as allies all states which
were in any way possible in the military sense was equally in
keeping with her traditional caution in the estimation of the
adversary’s strength as with the appreciation of her own momen-
tary weakness. This can, therefore, not be characterized as
‘unscrupulousness,’ because such a comprehensive organization
of a war is to be judged by criteria, not of heroism, but of ex-
pediency. Diplomacy must see to it that a people does not heroically
perish, but is practically preserved. Every road that leads to this is
then expedient, and not taking ^ must be characterized as criminal
neglect of duly.

With the revolutionization of Germany, the British concern
over a threatening Germanic world hegemony found an end, to
the relief of British statesmen.

Since then England has had no further interest in the complete
effacement of Germany from the map of Europe. On the con-
trary, the terrible collapse which occurred in the November days
of 1918 placed British diplomacy in a new situation which at
first was not even considered possible.

616

Mein Kampe

For four and a Vialf years the British world empire had fought
in order to break the supposed preponderance of a continental
power. Now suddenly a crash occurred which seemed to remove
this power entirely from the picture. There was manifested such
an absence of even the most primitive instinct of self-preserva-
tion that the European balance seemed thrown off its hinges by
an action of scarcely forty-eight hours: Germany destroyed and
France the first lontinental power of Europe.

The enormous propaganda which had made the British people
persevere and holcj out in this war, which recklessly incited them
and stirred up all their deepest instincts and passions, now inev-
itably weighed like lead on the decisions of British statesmen.
With the colonial, economic, and commercial destruction of
Germany, the British war aim was achieved; anything beyond
this was a curtailment of English interests. Through wiping out
a German power state in continental Europe, only the enemies of
England could gain. Nevertheless, in the November days of
1918 and up to midsummer of 1919, a reorientation of English
diplomacy, which in this long war more than ever before had used
up the emotional powers of the great masses, was no longer pos-
sible. It was not possible from the viewpoint of the existing atti-
tude of their own people, and was not possible in view of the
disposition of the military relation of forces. France had seized
upon the law of action ^ and could dictate to the others. The
single power, however, which in these months of haggling and
bargaining might have brought about a change, Germany herself,
lay in the convulsions of inner civil war and only kept on pro-
claiming, through the mouth of her so-called statesmen, her
readiness to accept any dictate whatsoever.

Now, if in the life of peoples, a nation, in consequence of its
total lack of an instinct of self-preservation, ceases to be a possible
‘active’ ally, she customarily sinks to the level of a slave nation
and her land succumbs to the fate of a colony.

Precisely to prevent France’s power from becoming excessive,
a participation of England in her predatory lusts was the sole
possible form for England herself. *

' ‘ias Geselz des ffandelns an sick genssen.’

England’s War Aim Not Achieved

617

Actually England did not achieve her war aim. The rise of a
European power above the relations of forces of the continental
state system of Europe was not only not prevented but was given
increased support.

In 1914, Germany as a military state was wedged in between
two countries one of which disposed of an equal power and the
other of a superior power.^ On top of this came the superior sea
power of England; France and Russia alone offered obstacles
and resistance to every disproportionate development of German
greatness. The extremely unfavorable situation of the Reich
from the viewpoint of military geography could be considered a
further coefficient of security against an excessive increase in the
power of this country. The coastline especially was unfavorable
from the military standpoint for a fight with England; it was
short and cramped, and the land front, on the other hand, dis-
proportionately long and, open.

The situation of France today is different: the first military
power, without a serious rival on the continent; on her southern
borders, as good as guaranteed against Spain and Italy; secured
against Germany by the feebleness of the fatherland; her coast-
line on a long front poised directly opposite the vital nerves of
the British Empire, Not only for airplanes and long-distance
batteries do the English vital centers constitute worth-while
targets, but also her trade lanes are exposed to the effects of
submarine warfare. A submarine campaign, based on the long
Atlantic coast and the equally long stretches of the French
border territories of the Mediterranean in Europe and North
Africa, would be devastating in effect.

Thus, the fruit of the struggle against the development of Germany’s
power was politically to bring about French hegemony on the con-
tinent. The military result: the reinforcement of France as the first
prime power on land and the recognition of the Union as an equal
sea power. Economically: the surrender of immense spheres of
British interest to former allies.

Just as England’s traditional political aims desire and necessi-
tate a certain Balkanization of Europe, those of France necessitate-
a Balkanization of Germany.

618

Mein Kampe

England's desire is and remains the prevention of the rise of a
continental power to world-political importance; that is, the main-
tenance of a certain balance of power between the European states;
for this seems the presupposition of a British world hegemony.

France's desire is and remains to prevent- the formation of a
unified power in Germany, the maintenance of a system of German
petty states with balanced power relations and without unified
leadership, and occupation of the left bank of the Rhine as the pre-
supposition for creating and safeguarding her position of hegemony
in Europe.

The ultimate aim of French diplomacy will always stand in con-
flict with the ultimate tendency of British statesmanship.

* * *

Anyone who undertakes an examination of the present alliance
possibilities for Germany from the above standpoint must arrive
at the conclusion that the last practicable tie remains with
England. Terrible as the consequences of the English war policy
were and are for Germany, we must not close our eyes to the
fact that a necessary interest on the part of England in the
annihilation of Germany no longer exists today, that, on the
contrary, England’s policy from year to year must be directed
more and more to an obstruction of France’s unlimited drive for
hegemony. An alliance policy is not conducted from the stand-
point of retrospective grudges, buh; is fructified by the knowledge
of retrospective experience. And experience should have taught
us that alliances for the achievement of negative aims languish
from inner weakness. National destinies are firmly forged together
only by the prospect of a common success in the sense of common
gains, conquests; in short, of a mutual extension of power.

How feebly our people think in terms of foreign policy can be
seen most clearly from the current press reports with regard to
the greater or lesser ‘friendliness to Germany' of this or that
'foreign statesman; such reports see a special guaranty of a

Alliance Possibilities for Germany

619

benevolent policy toward our nationality in this supposed atti-
tude on the part of such personalities. This is an utterly incred-
ible absurdity, a speculation on the unparalleled simplicity of
the average German shopkeeper dabbling in politics. No English
or American or Italian .statesman was ever ‘ pro-German.' As a
statesman, every Englishman will naturally be even more of an
Englishman, every American, an American, and no Italian will be
found ready to pursue any other policy than a pro-Italian one.
Therefore, anyone who thinks he can base alliances with foreign
nations on a pro-German orientation of their leading statesmen
is either an ass or a hypocrite. The premise for the linking of
national destinies is never based on mutual respect, let alone
affection, but on the prospect of expediency for both contracting
parties. In other words; true as it is that an English state.Mnan
will always pursue a pro-English policy and never a pro-German
one, certain definite interests of this pro-English policy may for
the most varjdng reasons coincide with pro-German interests.
This, of course, need only be the case up to a certain degree
and can some day shift to the exact opposite; hut the skill of a
leading statesman is manifested precisely in always finding at
specified periods those partners for the achievement of their own
needs, who must go the same road in pursuit of their own interests.

The practical moral of all this for the present can result only
from the answer to the following questions: What states at the
present time have no vital interest in having the French economic
and military power achieve a position of dominant hegemony in
Europe by the total exclusion of a German Central Europe? Yes,
which states on the basis of their own requirements for existence and
their previous political tradition see a threat to their own future in
such a development?

For on this point we must at length achieve full clarity: The
inexorable mortal enemy of the German people is and remains
France. It matters not at all who ruled or wiU rule in France,
whether Bourbons or Jacobins, Bonapartists or bourgeois demo-
crats, nprirfl.1 republicans or Red Bolshevists: the final goal of
their activity in foreign a^airs will always be an attempt to seize

620

Mein Kampf

possession of the Rhine border and to secure this watercourse for
France by means of a dismembered and shattered Germany.

England, desires no Germany as a world fewer, but France wishes
no power at all called Germany: quite an essential difference, after
all! Today we are not fighting for a position as a world power;
today we must struggle for the existence of our fatherland, for the
unity of our nation and the daily bread of our children. If we look
about us for European allies from this standpoint, there remain
only two states: England and Italy.

England does' not want a France whose military fist, unob-
structed by the rest of Europe, can undertake a policy which, one
way or another, must one day cross English interests. England
can never desire a France which, in possession of the immense
Western European iron and coal deposits, obtains the founda-
tions of a menacing economic world position. And England,
furthermore, cannot desire a France whose continental political
situation, thanks to the shattering of the rest of Europe, seems
so assured that the resumption of a French world policy along
broader lines is not only made possible but positively forced.
The Zeppelin bombs of former times might multiply a thousand-
fold every night; the military preponderance of France presses
heavy on the heart of Great Britain’s world empire.

And Italy, too, cannot and will not desire a further reinforce-
ment of the French position of superior power in Europe. Italy’s
future will always be conditioned by a development which is
geographically grouped around the Mediterranean basin.* What
drove Italy into the war was really not the desire to aggrandize
France, but the desire to give the hated Adriatic rival the death
blow. Any further continenteil strengthening of France, how-
ever, is an obstacle to Italy in the future, and we must not delude
ourselves that relations of parentage among nations can in any
way exclude rivalries.

On soberest and coldest reflection, it is today primarily these
two states, England and Italy, whose most natural selfish interests

*‘ein« Enlwicklung die sick gebietsmUssig um das VitieUandische Meer-
becken gruppiert.’ ^

Is Germany Fit eor Alli'ance Today?

621

are not, in the most essential points at least, opposed to the
German nation’s requirements for existence, and are, indeed, to a
certain extent, identified with them.

• ' • •

We must, to be sure, in judging such a possibility of alliance,
not overlook three factors. The first depends on us, the two
others on the states in question.

Can any nation ally itself with the present-day Germany? Can a
power which seeks in an alliance an aid for carrying out offensive
aims of its own, ally itself with a state whose leaders for years
have offered a picture of the most wretched incompetence, of
pacifistic cowardice, and the greater part of whose population,
in democratic-Marxist blindness, betray the interests of their
own nation and country in a way that cries to high Heaven?
Can any power hope today to create a valuable relation with a
state, in the hope of some day fighting in common for common
interests, when this country obviously possesses neither the
courage nor the desire to stir so much as a finger in defense of its
own bare existence? Will any power, for which an alliance is
and should be more than a treaty for the guaranty and mainte-
nance of a state of slow putrefaction like the old Triple Alliance,
obligate itself for weal or woe to a state whose characteristic
way of life consists only in cringing submissiveness without and
disgraceful oppression of national virtues within; with a state
that no longer possesses any greatness, since on the basis of its
whole behavior it no longer deserves it; with governments which
can boast of no respect whatsoever on the part of their citizens,
so that foreign countries cannot possibly harbor any greater
admiration for them?

No, a power which itself wants to be respected and which
hopes to gain more from alliances than fees for hungry parlia-
mentarians will not ally itself with present-day Germany; in-
deed, it cannot. *And in our present unfitness for alliance lies the

622

Mein Kaupe

deepest and ultimate ground for the solidarity of the enemy bandits.
Since Germany never defends herself, except by a few flaming
protests on the part of our parliamentary 61ite, and the rest of
the world has no reason for fighting in our defense, and as a
matter of principle God does not make cowardly nations free —
notwithstanding the whimpering of our patriotic leagues to that
effect — there remains nothing else even for the states which
possess no direct interest in our total annihilation but to take
part in France’s campaigns of pillage, if only, by such cooperation
and participation in the pillage, at least to prevent the exclusive
strengthening of France alone.

Secondly, we must not overlook the difficulty in undertaking
a reorientation of the great popular masses of the countries previ-
ously hostile to us, who have been influenced in a certain direc-
tion by mass propaganda. For it is not possible to represent a
nationality as ‘Huns,’ ‘robbers,’ ‘Vandals,’ etc., over a period
of years, only to discover the opposite suddenly overnight, and
recommend the former enemy as the ally of tomorrow.

Yet even more attention must be given to a third fact which
will be of essential importance for the shaping of the coming
European alliance relations:

Little interest as England, from a British state viewpoint,
may have in a further annihilation of Germany, that of the inter-
national stock exchange Jews in such a development is great.
The cleavage between the official, or, better expressed, the tradi-
tional, British statesmanship and the controlling Jewish stock
exchange powers is nowhere better shown than in their different
position on the questions of British foreign policy. Jewish finance
in opposition to the interests of the British state welfare desires not
only the complete economic annihilation of Germany, hut also her
complete political enslavement. The internationalization of our
German economy — that is, the appropriation of the German
labor power by Jewish world finance — can be completely car-
ried out only in a politically Bolshevist state. But if the Marxist
shock troops of international Jewish stock exchange capital are
to break the back of the German national state for good and all.

Jewish World Agitation Against Germany 623

this can only be done with friendly aid from outside. The armies
of France must, therefore, besiege the German state structure
until the Reich, inwardly exhausted, succumbs to the Bolshevistic
shock troop of intemational Jewish world finance.

And so the Jew today is the great agitator for the complete destruc-
tion of Germany. Whereaer in the world we read of attacks against
Germany, Jews are their fabricators, just as in peacetime and
during the War the press of the Jewish stock exchange and Marxists
systematically stirred up hatred against Germany until state after
state abandoned neutrality and, renouncing the trye interests of the
peoples, entered the service of the World War coalition.

The Jewish train of thought in all this is clear. The Bolshevi-
zation of Germany — that is, the extermination of the national
foLkish Jewish intelligentsia to make possible the sweating of the
German working class imder the yoke of Jewish world finance —
is conceived only as a preliminary to the further extension of this
Jewish tendency of world conquest. As often in history, Ger-
many is the great pivot in the mighty struggle. If our people and
our state become the victim of these bloodthirsty and avaricious
Jewish tyrants of nations, the whole earth will sink into the
snares of this octopus; if Germany frees herself from this em-
brace, this greatest of dangers to nations may be regarded as
broken for the whole world.

Therefore, as surely as the Jews will bring their entire agita-
tional efforts to bear, not only to maintain the hostility of the
nations tb Germany, but if possible to increase it even more,
just as surely only a fraction of*this activity coincides with the
real interests of the peoples poisoned by it. In general, the Jews
will always fight within the various national bodies with those
weapons which on the basis of the recognized mentality of these
nations seem most elective and promise the greatest success. In
our national body, so tom with regard to blood, it is therefore
the more or less ‘ cosmopolitan,’ pacifistic-ideological ideas, aris-
ing from this fact; in short, the intemational tendencies which
they utilize in their stmggle for power: -in France they work
with the well-kMwn and correctly estimated chauvinism; in

624

Mkin Kampe

England with economic and world-political considerations; in
short, they alwa3rs utilize the most essential qualities that char-
acterize the mentality of a people. Only when in such a way they
have achieved a certain profusion of economic and political in-
fluence and predominance do they strip off the fetters of these
borrowed weapons, and display in exactly the same measure the
true inner purposes of their will and their struggle. They now
begin to destroy with ever-greater rapidity, until they have
turned one state after another into a heap of rubble on which
they can then establish the sovereignty of the eternal Jewish
empire.

In England as well as Italy the cleavage between the views of the
better indigenous statesmanship and the will of the world stock ex-
change Jews is clear; sometimes, indeed, it is crassly obvious.

Only in France does there exist today more than ever an inner
unanimity between the intentions of the Jew-controlled stock
exchange and the desire of the chauvinist^inded national states-
men. But in this very identity there lies an immense danger for
Germany. For this very reason, France is and remains by far
the most terrible enemy. This people, which is basically becoming
more and more negrified, constituies in its tie with the aims of
Jewish world domination an enduring danger for the existence of
the while race in Europe. For the contamination by Negro blood
on the Rhine in the heart of Europe is just as much in keeping
with the perverted sadistic thirst for vengeance of this hereditary
enemy of our people as is the ice-cold calculation of the Jew thus
to begin bastardizing the European continent at its core and to
deprive the white race of the foimdations for a sovereign exist-
ence through infection with lower humanity.

What France, spurred on by her own thirst for vengeance and
systematically led by the Jew, is doing in Europe today is a sin
against the existence of white humanity and some day will incite
against this people all the avenging spirits of a race which has recog-
nized racial pollution as the original sin of humanity.

For Germany, however, the French menace constitutes an obliga-
tion to subordinate all considerations of sentin^ and hold out a

Advances to France

625

hand to those who, threatened as much as we are, will neither suffer
nor tolerate France’s desires for domination.

In the predictable future there can be only two allies for Germany ~)
in Europe: England and Italy. J

Anyone who takes the trouble to glance back and follow Ger-
many’s leadership in foreign policy since the revolution will, in
view of the constant and incomprehensible failure of our govern-
ments, be unable to do otherwise than take his head in his hands,
and either simply despair or, in flaming indignation, declare
war on such a r6^me. These actions no longer have anything in
common with lack of understanding: for what would have seemed
unthinkable to any thinking brain * has been done by these in-
tellectual Cydopses of our November parties: they have courted
France’s favor. Yes, indeed, in all these years, with the touching
simplidty of incorrigible dreamers, they have tried again and
again to make friends with France; over and over again they
have bowed and scraped before the ‘great nation’; in every
shrewd trick of the French hangman they have felt justified in
seeing the first sign of a visible change of attitude. Our real
political wirepullers, of course, never harbored this insane belief.
For them currying favor with France was only the obvious means of
sabotaging every practical alliance policy. They were never in
doubt as to the aims of France and her men behind the scenes.
What compelled them to act as if they nevertheless honestly
believed in the possibility of a change in the fate of Germany
was the sober realmation that otherwise our people would take
things into their own hands.

Even for us, of course, it is hard to represent England as a
possible future ally in the ranks of our own movement. Again
and again our Jewish press has known how to concentrate spedal
hatred on England, and many a good German simpleton has

‘ ‘ . .was jedem dihkenden Gehim tiben als undenkbar erschienen wSre . ,

626

Mein Kampf

fallen into the Jewish snare with the greatest willingness, drooled
about ‘strengthening’ German sea power, protested against the
rape of our colonies, recommended their reconquest, and thus
helped furnish the material which the Jewish scoundrel could
pass on to his fellow Jews in England for practical propagandist
use. For it should gradually dawn even on our political bourgeois
simpletons that what we have to fight for today is not ‘sea power,’
etc. The orientation of the German national strength toward
this aim, without the most thoroughgoing previous securing of
our position in Europe, was an absurdity even before the War.
Today such a hope must be counted among those stupidities
which in the field of politics are characterized as crimes.

Sometimes it was really maddening to be compelled to look on
as the Jewish wirepullers succeeded in occupying our people with
things that are today of the most secondary nature, inciting them
to demonstrations and protests, while at the same time France
was tearing piece after piece out of the flesh of our national body,
and the foundations of our independence were systematically
taken away from us.

Here I must recall a special hobby which in these years the Jew
rode with amazing adroitness: the South Tyrol.

Yes, the South Tyrol. If I here concern myself with this par-
ticular question, it is not least to settle accounts with that hy-
pocritical rabble which, counting on the forgetfulness and stu-
pidity of our broad strata, has the insolence to mimic on this
point a national indignation, which is more alien especially to the
parliamentary swindlers than honest conceptions of property to
a magpie.

I would like to emphasize that I personally am among the men
who, when the fate of the South Tyrol was being decided — that
is, beginning in August, 1914, up to November, 1918 — went
where this territory was being actively defended — I mean the
army. In those years I did my part of the figh ti ng, not in order
that the South Tyrol should be lost, but in order that it should be
preserved for the fatherland just like every other German
province. *

The South Tyrol Question

627

The ones who did not do their bit at that time were the parlia-
mentary sneak-thieves, all the politics-playing party rabble.
On the contrary, while we fought in the conviction that only a
victorious issue to the War would preserve this South Tyrol for
the German nationality, the big-mouths of these Ephialteses
agitated and plotted against victory until at last the battling
Siegfried succumbed to the treacherous dagger thrust. For the
preservation of the South Tyrol in German possession was naturally
not guaranteed by the lying inflammatory speeches of parliamentary
sharpers on the Vienna Rathausplatz or in front of the Munich
Feldhermhalle, but only by the battalions at the fighting front.
Those who broke this front betrayed the South Tyrol, just as they be-
trayed all other German territories.

And anyone who believes today that he can solve the South
Tyrol question by protests, declarations, clubby parades, is either
a very special scoundrel or a German petit bourgeois.

We must clearly recognize the fact that the recovery of the lost ter-
ritories is not won through solemn appeals to the Lord or through
pious hopes in a League of Nations, but only by force of arms.

And so the only question is. Who is ready to attempt the recon-
quest of these lost territories by defiant armed force?

As far as my person is concerned, I can here assure you with a
clear conscience that I could still muster up enough courage to
take part in the victorious conquest of the South Tyrol at the
head of a parliamentary storm battalion that ought to be formed,
con sis ting of parliamentary big-mouths and other party leaders
plus various privy councilors, (jod knows it would give me pleas-
ure if suddenly a few shrapnel would burst over the heads of such
a ‘flaming’ protest demonstration. I think if a fox were to break
into a chicken-coop the cackling could hardly be worse, or the
rush of the feathered fowl for safety any quicker, than the flight
of such a splendid ‘protest rally.’

But the vile thing about the whole business is that the gentle-
men themselves do not believe they can achieve anything in this
way. They per^nally know, better than anyone else, the im-
possibility and innocuoysness of all the fuss they are making. ‘

628

Mein Kampe

But they carry on as they do, because it is naturally somewhat
easier to shoot ofiE their mouths for the recovery of the South
Tyrol today than it once was to fight for keeping it. Everyone
does his own part; then we sacrificed our blood, and today this
company sharpen their beaks.

It is especially delightful, moreover, to see how Viennese legit-
imist circles literally bristle with their present activity for re-
gaining the South Tyrol. Seven years ago, to be sure, their noble
and exalted ruling house helped by a scoundrelly deed of treach-
erous perjury to make it possible for the victorious world coalition
to win among other things the South Tyrol. At that time these
circles supported the policy of their treacherous dynasty, and
didn’t care a damn about the South Tyrol or anything else.
Today, of course, it is easier to take up the struggle for these
territories, for today, after all, it is fought only with ‘spiritual
weapons,’ and it is always easier to talk your throat hoarse in
some ‘protest meeting’ — from noble, heartfelt indignation —
and wear your fingers to the bone writing a newspaper article
than, say, to blow up bridges during the occupation of the
Ruhr, jj

The reason why in the last few years certain definite circles have
made the ‘South Tyrol’ question the pivotal point of German-
Italian relations is obvious. Jews and Habsburg legitimists have
the greatest interest in presenting a German alliance policy which
might lead some day to the resurrection of a free German fatherland.
All this fuss today is not made for love of the South Tyrol — which
it does not help but only harms — but for fear of a possible German-
Italian understanding.

It is quite in keeping with the general hypocrisy and slanderous
tendencies of these circles when they attempt with cold and brazen
gall to make things look a&'dwe had 'betrayed^ the South Tyrol.

To these genUemen let it be said with all plainness: the South
Tyrol was ^betrayed' first and foremost by taery German with sound
limbs who in the years 19H-1918 did not stand somewhere at the
front, putting his services at the disposal of the fafherland;

secondly, by every man who in those yea^s did not help to strengthen

Who Betrayed the South Tyrol?

629

our national body’s power of resistance for the pursuit of the War and
to fortify the endurance of our people for carrying through this fight
to the end;

thirdly, the South Tyrol was betrayed by eoery man wHo cooperated
in the outbreak of the November revolution — whether directly by
deed or indirectly by the cowardly toleration of the deed — and thereby
smashed the weapon which alone could have saved the South Tyrol.

Yes, my brave lip-service protesters, that is hovf things stand!

Today I am guided only by the sober realization that lost territories
are not won back by sharp parliamentary big-motUhs and their glib-
ness of tongue, but by a sharp sword; in other words, by a bloody
fight.

But I do not hesitate to declare that, now the dice have fallen, I
not only regard a reconquest of the South Tyrol by war as impossible,
but that I personally would reject it in the conviction that for this
question the flame of national enthusiasm of the whole German people
could not be achieved to a degree which would offer the premise for
victory. I believe, on the contrary, that, if this blood some day were
staked, it would be a crime to stake it for two hundred thousand Ger-
mans while next door more than seven millions languish under
foreign domination and the vital artery of the German people runs
through the hunting ground of African Negro hordes.

If the German nation wants to end a state of affairs that threatens
its extermination in Europe, it must not fall into the error of the pre-
War period and make enemies of God and the world; it must recog-
nize the most dangerous enemy and strike at him with all its concen-
trated power. And if this victory *is obtained through sacrifices else-
where, the coming generations of our people will not condemn us.
The more brilliant the resultant successes, the better they will appre-
ciate the dire distress and profound cares, and the bitter decision bom
of them.

What must guide us today is again and again the basic insight
that the reconquest of a Reich’s lost territories is primarily the
question of regaining the political independence and power of
the motherland.

To make this possible and sure by an astute alliance policy is •

630

Mein Kamfe

the first task of a powerful German leadership in the field of
foreign affairs.

Especially we National Socialists must guard against being
tglfpn in tow by the Jewish-led bourgeois patriots of the word.
Heaven help us if our movement, instead of preparing for the strug-
gle, were to spend its time in protests!

The fantastic conception of the Nibelungen * alliance with the
Habshurg state 'cadaver has been the ruin of Gmnany. Faniastic
sentimentality in the treatment of today’s diplomatic possibilities is
the best means of preventing our resurrection forever.

* * *

Here I must briefly take up those objections which apply to
the three questions raised above, to wit, the questions whether
anyone will

first, make an alliance with the present-day Germany in her visible
weakness that is clear for all to see;

secondly, whether the enemy nations seem capable of such a re-
orientation; and

thirdly, whether the existing influence of the Jews is not stronger
than -any understanding or good intentions and will thus frustrate
and nullify all plans.

I think I have sufficiently discussed one half of the first ques-
tion. Of course, no one will make an alliance with present-day
Germany. No power in the world will venture to link its destiny
to a state whose government is bound to destroy all confidence.
And as regards the attempt of many of our national comrades to
condone the government’s actions because of the wretched men-
tality of our people at the time, and even accept this as an excuse,
we must take the sharpest position against this.

^Although the Niehdmgenlied, the German national epic, is a tale of
treachery and deceit from beginning to end, in the German popular con-
sciousness, the Nibelungs were conspicuous for their loyal, trusting natures.
By Niebelungen alliance. Hitler means an alliance entered into by the loyal,
naively trusting Germans.

First Signs of a German Rebirth

631

It is true, the absence of character in our people for the last
six years has been profoundly sad, their indifference toward the
most important concerns of our nation has been truly crushing,
their cowardice has sometimes cried out to high Heaven. But
it must not be forgotten that we are nevertheless dealing with a
people which a few years previous offered the world the most ad-
mirable example of the Wghest human virtues. From the August
days of 1914 up to the end of the mighty conflict of nations, no
people on earth revealed more manly courage, tenacious en-
durance, and patience in suffering than our German people which
has today grown so wretched. No one will maintain that the dis-
grace of our present period is the characteristic expression of our
nation’s being. What we are compelled to experience around us
and in us today is only the horrible, maddening, and infuriating
influence of the perjuring deed of November 9, 1918. Here more
than ever the poet’s sa 3 dng applies that evil begets evil. But even
at the present time, our people has not entirely lost its good basic
elements; they only are sliunbering unawakened in the depths;
and from time to time it has been possible to see, gleaming like
s umme r lightning in an overcast firmament, virtues which the
future Germany will some day remember as the first signs of an
incipient recovery. More than once, thousands and thousands of
young Germans have stepped forward with the self-sacrificing
resolve to sacrifice their young lives freely and joyfully on the al-
tar of the beloved fatherland, just as in 1914. Again, millions of
men are diligently and industriously at work, as though the
ravages of the revolution had nether been. The blacksmith stands
again at his anvil, the peasant guides his plow, and the scholar
sits in his study, all with the same painstaking devotion to duty.

The repressions on the part of our enemies no longer meet the
same condoning laughter as formerly, but grieved, embittered
faces. Undoubtedly a great change in sentiment has taken place.

If today all this is not yet expressed in a rebirth of our people’s
concept of political power and instinct of self-preservation, it is
the fault of those who, less by the grace of Heaven than by self-
appointment, have governed our people to death since 1918.

632

Mein Kampf

Yes, if we bemoan the state of the nation today, we may ask:
What has been done to improve it? Is the feeble support given by
the people to the decisions of our governments — decisions which
scarcely existed — only a sign of our nation’s small vitality or
is it not even more a sign of total failure in. the handling of this
precious treasure? What have our governments done to reimplant
the spirit of proud self-reliance^ manly defiance, and wrathful
hatred in this people?

When in the year 1919 the German people was burdened with
the peace treaty, we should have been justified in hoping that
precisely through this instrument of boundless repression the cry
for German freedom would have been immensely promoted.
Peace treaties whose demands are a scourge to tuitions not seldom
strike the first roll of drums for the uprising to come.

What could have been done with this peace treaty of Ver-
sailles?!

This instrument of boundless extortion and abject humiliation
might, in the hands of a willing government, have become an in-
strument for whipping up the national passions to fever heat.
With a brilliant propagandist exploitation of these sadistic cruel-
ties, the indifference of a people might have been raised to indig-
nation, and indignation to blazing fury!

How could every single one of these points have been burned
into the brain and emotion of this people, until finally in sixty
million heads, in men and women, a common sense of shame and
a common hatred would have become a single fiery sea of flame,
from whose heat a will as hard hs steel would have risen and a
cry burst forth:

Give us arms again!

Yes, my friends, that is what such a peace treaty would do. In
the boundlessness of its oppression, the shamelessness of its de-
mands, lies the greatest propaganda weapon for the reawakening
of a nation’s dormant spirits of life.

For this, to be sure, from the child’s primer down to the last
newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every ad-
vertising pillar and every billboard, must be pressed into the ser-

Transformation of Anti-German Psychosis 633

vice of this one great mission, until the timorous prayer of our
present parlor patriots: ‘Lord, make us free!’ is transformed in
the brain of the smallest boy into the burning plea: ‘Almighty
God, bless our arms when the time comes; be just as thou "hast always
been; judge now whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord, bless our
battle!’

All this was neglected' and nothing was done.

Who, -then, will be surprised that our people is ftot as it should
be and could be? If the rest of the world sees in us only a stooge,
an obsequious dog, who gratefuUy licks the hands that have just
beaten him?

Certainly our capacity for alliances today is injured by our
people, but most of all by its governments. They in their cor-
ruption are to blame if after eight years of the most unlimited
oppression so little will for freedom is present.

Much, therefore, as an active alliance policy is linked with the
necessary evaluation of our people, the latter is equally dependent
on the existence of a governmental power which does not want to
be a hand3anan for foreign countries, not a taskmaster over its
own strength, but a herald of the national conscience.

If our people has a state leadership which. sees its mission in
this light, six years will not pass before a bold Reich leadqphip
in the field of foreign affairs will dispose of an equally bold will
on the part of a people thirsting for freedom.

* * *

The second objection, the great difficulty of transforming hos-
tile peoples into friendly allies, can be answered as follows:

The general anti-German psychosis cultivated in other countries
by war propaganda will inevitably continue to exist until the German
Reich, through the resurrection visible to all of a German will for self-
preservation, achieves the character of a state which plays on the gen-
eral European chessboard and with which it is possible to play. Only
when government and people seem to provide absolute guaranty
of a possible fitne'^s for alliance can one or anoth^ power, out of

634

Mein Kaupf

parallel interest, think of reshaping public opinion by the effects
of propaganda. This, too, naturally requires years of shrewd
continuous work. The very need of this long period for altering
the sentiments of a people necessitates caution in undertaking it;
that is, no one will enter upon such an activity unless he is ab-
solutely convinced of the value of such a labor and its fruits for
the future. No one will want to change the spiritual orientation
of a nation on \he strength of the empty bragging of some more
or less witty foreign minister, without possessing a tangib le
guaranty of the yalue of a new orientation. Otherwise this would
lead to a complete shattering of public opinion. The most reliable
certainty for the possibility of a future alliance with a state does
not lie in the bombastic phrases of individual members of the gov-
ernment, but in the visible stability of a definite and seemingly
expedient governmental tendency, and in a public opinion with
an analogous orientation. The faith in this will be the firmer, the
greater the visible activity of a governing power in the field of
propagandist preparation and foundation of its work, and, con-
versely, the more unmistakably the will of public opinion is re-
flected in the governmental tendency.

A nation, then, will — in our situation — be regarded as fit for
allioKce, if government and public opinion with equal fanaticism
proclaim and uphold the will to fight for freedom. This is the pre-
mise for beginning a reorientation in the public opinion of other
nations, which on the basis of their knowledge are willing, in
defense of their very own interests, to go a stretch of the way by
the side of a partner who seems suitable to them — in other words,
to conclude an alliance.

But there is one thing more to be said in this connection : Since
the transformation of a certain spiritual altitude in a people requires
hard work in itself, and at first will not be understood by many, it is
a crime and a stupidity at once, to furnish these opposing elements
with weapons for their counter-efforts by mistakes of one's own.

It must be realized that it will necessarily take a certain time
before a people has completely comprehended the inner purposes
of a government, siiice explanations cannot be ^ven regarding the

Concentration on One Enemy

635

final ultimate aims of certain preliminary political work, and one
can only reckon either with the blind faith of the masses or the
intuitive insight of the intellectually superior leader strata. But
since in many people this clairvoyant political sixth sense is not
present, and for political reasons explanations cannot be given, a
part of the intellectual Ipader class will always turn against new
tendencies which due to th^ir incomprehensibility can easily be
interpreted as mere experiments. Thus, the resistance of the
anxious conservative elements is aroused.

For this reason more than any other, it becomes our highest
duty to make sure that aU serviceable weapons are wrested from
the hands of such disturbers of mutual understanding, especially
when, as in our case, we are dealing with nothing but the totally
impracticable, purely fantastic babble of inflated parlor patriots
and petit bourgeois cafe politicians. For on calm reflection no
one will seriously deny that screaming for a new battle fleet, for
recovery of our colonies, etc., is in reality nothing but silly gossip,
without so much as a thought of practical application. The way
in which the senseless outpourings of these knights of the protest
meeting, some of them innocent, some of them insane, but all of
them in the silent service of our mortal enemies, are e.xploited
in England, cannot be characterized as favorable to Geririany.
And so we wear ourselves out in harmful little demonstrations
against God and the whole world and forget the first principle
which is the premise for every success, to wit: Whaler you do,
do it completely. By beefing against five or ten states, we negUct the
concentration of all our will power and physical force for the thrust to
the heart of our infamous enemy, and sacrifice the possibility of
strengthening ourselves by an alliance for this conflict.

Here, too, lies a mission for the National Socialist movement. It
must teach our people to look beyond trifles and see the biggest
things, not to split up over irrelevant things, and never to forget that
the aim for which we must fight today is the bare existence of our peo-
ple, and the sole enemy which we mvtst strike is and remains the power
which is robbing u^of this existence.

Some things may be profcy/tndly painful to us. Bu} this is far from

636

Mein Kampf

being a ground for renouncing reason and bickering lottdly and
senselessly with the whole world instead of attacking the most mortal
enemy in concentrated force.

Furthermore, the German people has no moral right to blame the
rest of the world for its conduct as long as it has not called to account
the criminals who sold and betrayed their whole country. Realty,
it is not serious^ for us to curse and protest against England, Italy,
etc., from a distance, and lease the scoundrels at large who, in the
pay of enemy war propaganda, took away our arms, broke our moral
backbone, and auctioned of the crippled Reich for thirty pieces of
silver.

The enemy does only what was to be predicted. We should learn
from his conduct and his acts.

Anyone who is really unwilling to rise to the heights of such a
conception should finally bear in mind that the only thing re-
maining in that case is renunciation, because then any alliance
policy is impossible for the future. For if we cannot ally ourselves
with England because she stole our colonies, or with Italy because
she has the South Tyrol, with Poland and Czechoslovakia on
their merits, then, aside from France — who incidentally did
steal Alsace-Lorraine from us — there would remain no one else
in Ehrope.

Whether this serves the German people is scarcely subject to
doubt. The only thing that can remain in doubt is whether such
an opinion is put forward by a simple dunce or by a shrewd ad-
versary.

When it comes to leaders, I always believe the latter.

And so, in all human probability, a transformation of the psy-
che of individual peoples, who have hitherto been hostile but
whose true future interests lie close to our own, may very well be
possible if the inner strength of our state as well as our visible will
for the preservation of our existence again make us seem worthy
as an ally, and, further, if awkward movements of our own, or
even criminal acts, do not furnish grist for the mill of the enemies
of such a future tie with nations previously hostile to us.

637

Fascist Italy and the Jews

The hardest to answer is the third objection.

Is it conceivable that the representatives of the real interests
of the nations possible for alliance can put through their views in
opposition to the will of the Jewish mortal enemy of free national
states? ■ .

Can the forces of traditional British statesmanship, for exam-
ple, break the devastating Jewish influence or not?

This question, as already stated, is very hard to answer. It
depends on too many factors to permit of a conclusive judgment.
One thing is certain in any case; In one country the present state
power can be regarded as so stabilized and serves the interests of the
country so absolutely that we can m longer speak of a really elective
obstruction of political necessities by international Jemish forces.

The struggle that Fascist Italy is waging, though perhaps in
the last analysis unconsciausly {which I personally do not believe),
against the three main weapons of the Jews is the best indication
that, even though indirectly, the poison fangs of this supra-state
power are being torn out. The prohibition of Masonic secret so-
cieties, the persecution of the supra-national press, as well as the
continuous demolition of international Marxism, and, conversely,
the steady reinforcement 6f the Fascist state conception, will in the
course of the years cause the Italian government to serve ihe iriltrests
of the Italian people more and more, without regard for the hissing
of the Jewish world hydra.

Things are more difficult in England. In this country of the
‘freest democracy,’ the Jew exerts an almost unlimited dictator-
ship indirectly through public opinion. And yet, even there an
incessant struggle is taking place between the advocates of Brit-
ish state interests and the proponents of a Jewish world dictator-
ship.

How sharply these opposites often clash could be seen most
clearly for the first time after the War in the different attitude
toward the Japanese problem of the British government leaders
on the one hand and of the press on the other.

Immediately afjer the end of the War, the old strain in the rela-
tions of America and Japan began to reappeai;, Of course, the

638

Mein Kamff

great European powers could not ranain indiSeient to this new
war danger. No ties of kinship can prevent a certain feeling of
envious concern in England toward the growth of the American
Union in all fields of international economic and power politics.
The former colonial country', child of the great mother, seems to
be growing into a new master of the world. It is understandable
that England today re-examines her, old alliances with amdous
concern and British statesmen gaze with trepidation toward a
period in which it will no longer be said:

•Britannia rules the wazesl’ But instead: ‘The seas for the
Union! ’

It is harder to attack the gigantic American colossus of states
with the enormous wealth of its virgin soil than the wedged-in
German Reich. If the dice and the ultimate decision should ever
roU,^ England, if left to her own resources would be doomed.
And so they snatch eagerly at the yellow fist and cling to an al-
liance which, from the racial viewpoint, is perhaps unjustifiable,
but from the ^•iewpoint of state politics nevertheless represents
the sole possibility of strengthening the British world position
in the face of the upsurging American continent.

While the English state leadership, despite the common strug-
gle off the European battlefields, could not resolve to relax its al-
liance with the Asiatic partner, the whole Jewish press fell on this
alliance from behind.

How' is it possible that the organs of a Northcliffe,* until 1918
the faithful armor-bearer of the British struggle against the Ger-
man Reich, should now break their loyalty and go their own ways?

The annihilation of Germany was not an English interest, but
primarily a Jewish one, just as today a destruction of Japan serves
British state interests less than it does the widespread desires of
the leaders of the projected Jewish world empire. While England
sweats to maintain her position in this world, the Jew organizes
his attack for its conquest.

1 ‘leennjemels . . . die Wiirfel und die letste Entschddung rotten wilrden

* Second edition omits JforthcliSe's name, speaking; merely of ‘Jewish
organs.’

6d9

England and the Jews .

He already sees the present-day European states as will-less
tools in his fist, whether indirectly through a so-called Western
democracy, or in the form of direct domination by Jewish Bol-
shevism. But it is not only the Old World that he holds thus en-
meshed, the same fate menaces the New. It is Jews who govern
the stock exchange 'forces of the American Union. Every year
makes them more and -more the controlling masters of the pro-
ducers in a nation of one hundred and twenty jnillions; only a
single great man, Ford,' to their fury, still maintains full in-
. dependence.

With astute shrewdness they knead public offinion and make it
into an instrument for their own future.

Already the greatest heads of Jewry see the approaching fulfill-
ment of their testamentary prophecy about the great devouring
of nations.

Within this great herd of denationalized colonial territories, a
single independent state might still wreck the whole work at the
eleventh hour. For a Bolshevistic world can exist only if it em-
braces everything.

If only a single state is preserved in its national strength and
greatness, the world empire of Jewish satrapies, like every
tyranny in this world, must succumb to the force of the national
idea.

Now the Jew knows only too well that in his thousand years of
adaptation he may have been able to undermine European peo-
ples and train them to be raceless bastards, but that he would
scarcely be in a position to subject an Asiatic national state like
Japan to this fate. Today he may mimic the German and the
Englishman, the American and Frenchman, but he lacks the
bridges to the yellow Asiatic. And so he strives to break the
Japanese national state with the strength of amilar existing for-
mations, in order to rid himself of the dangerous adversary before
the last state power is transformed in his hand into a despotism
over defenseless beings.

In his millennial Jewish empire he dreads a Japanese national

* Second edition 9.;bstitutes ‘only very few’ for 'a single great man, Ford.’ ,

640

Mein Kampf

state, and, therefore, desires its annihilation even before estab-
lishing his own dictatorship.

And so he incites the nations against Japan as he once did
against Germany, and this is what brings it about that, while
British statesmen are still striving to build on the alliance with
Japan, the British-Jewish press already demands struggle against
the ally, and prepares the war of annihilation imder the procla-
mation of democracy and under the battle-cry: Down with Jap-
anese militarism and imperialism!

That is how insubordinate the Jew has become in England to-,
day.

And for this reason it is there that the struggle against the
Jewish world menace will begin.

And again the National Socialist movement has the mightiest
task to fulfill.

It must open the eyes of the people on the subject of foreign nations
and must remind them again and again of the true enemy of our pres-
ent-day world. In place of hatred against Aryans, from whom al-
most everything may separate us, but with whom we are bound by
comtnon blood or the great line of a kindred culture, it must call eter-
nal wrath upon the head of the foul enemy of mankind as the real
originator of our sufferings.

It must make certain that in our country, at least, the mortal
enemy is recognized and that the fight against him becomes a gleam-
ing symbol of brighter days, to show other nations the way to the sal-
vation of an embattled Aryan humanity.

For the rest, may reason be our guide, may our will be our strength.
May the sacred duty to act in this way give us determination, and
above all may our faith protect %is.

CHAPTER

XIV

Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy

T

JL HERE are two reasons which induce me to
submit to a special examination the relation of Germany to
Russia:

1. Here perhaps we are dealing with the most decisive concern
of all German foreign affairs; and

2. This question is also the touchstone for the political capac-
ity of the young National Socialist movements to think clearly
and to act correctly.

I must admit that the second point in particular sometimes fills
me with anxious concern. Since our young movement does not
obtain membership material from the camp of the indiffiarent,
but chiefly from very extreme outlooks, it is only too natural if
these people, in the field of imderstanding foreign affairs as in
other fields, are burdened with the preconceived ideas or feeble
understanding of the circles to yrhich they previously belonged,
both politically and philosophically. And this by no means ap-
plies only to the man who comes to us from the Left. On the con-
trary. Harmful as his previous instruction with regard to such
problems might be, in part at least it was not infrequently bal-
anced by an existing remnant of natural and healthy instinct.
Then it was only necessary to substitute a better attitude for the
influence that was previously forced upon him, and often the es-
sentially healthy instinct and impulse of self-preservatior that
still survived in Um could be regarded as our best ally.

642

Mein Kampf

It is much harder, on the other hand, to induce clear political
tliinlfing in a man whose previous education in this field was no
less devoid of any reason and logic, but on top of all this had also
sacrified his last remnant of natural instinct on the altar of ob-
jectivity. Precisely the members of our so-called intelligentsia
are the hardest to move to a really clear and logical defense of
their interests and the interests of their nation. They are not
only burdened itrith a dead weight of the most senseless concep-
tions and prejudices, but what makes matters completely in-
tolerable is that they have lost and abandoned all healthy in-
stinct of self-preservation. The Xational Socialist movement is
compelled to endure hard struggles with these people, hard be-
cause, despite total incompetence, they often unfortunately are
afilicted with an amazing conceit, which causes them to look down
without the slightest inner justification upon other people, for
the most part healthier than they. Supercilious, arrogant know-
it-aUs, without any capacity for cool testing and weighing, which,
in txum, must be recognized as the pre-condition for any will and
action in the field of foreign affairs.

Since these very circles are beginning today to divert the ten-
dency of our foreign policy in the most catastrophic way from any
real defense of the folkish interests of our people, placing it in-
stead in the service of their fantastic ideology, I feel it incumbent
upon me to discuss for my supporters the most important ques-
tion in the field of foreign affairs, our relation to Russia, in par-
ticular, and as thoroughly as is necessary for the general under-
standing and possible in the scone of such a work.

But first I would like to make the following introductory re-
marks:

If imder foreign policy we must understand the regulation of
a nation’s relations with the rest of the world, the manner of this
regulation will be determined by certain definite facts. As Na-
tional Socialists we can, furthermore, establish the following
principle concerning the nature of the foreign policy of a folkish
state:

The foreign policy of the folkish state must sbfeguard the exist-

Significance of the State’s Area

643

ence on this planet of the race embodied in the state, by creating a
healthy, viable natural relation between the nation's population and
growth on the one hand and the quantity and quality of its soil on
the other hand.

As a healthy relation we may regard only that condition which
assures the sustenance of a people on its own soil. Every other
condition, even if it eftdures for hundreds, nay, thousands of
years, is nevertheless unhealthy and will sooner t)r later lead to
the injury if not annihilation of the people in question.

■ Only an adequately large space on this earth assures a nation of
freedom of existence.

Moreover, the necessary size of the territory to be settled can-
not be judged exclusively on the basis of present requirements,
not even in fact on the basis of the yield of the soil compared to
the population. For, as I explained in the first volume, under
‘German Alliance Policy Before the War,’ in addition to its im-
portance as a direct source of a people’s food, another significance,
that is, a military and political one, must be attributed to the area of
a state. If a nation’s sustenance as such is assured by the amount
of its soil, the safeguarding of the existing soil itself must also be
borne in mind. This lies in the general power-political strength
of the state, which in turn to no small extent is determined by geo-
military considerations.

Hence, the German nation can defend its future only as a world
power. For more than two thousand years the defense of our
people’s interests, as we should designate our more or less for-
tunate activity in the field of fereign affairs, was world history.
We ourselves were witnesses to this fact: for the gigantic struggle
of the nations in the years 1914^1918 was only the struggle of the
German people for its existence on the globe, but we designated
the type of event itself as a World War.

The German people entered this struggle as a supposed world
power. I say here ‘ supposed,’ for in reality it was none. If the
German nation in 1914 had had a different relation between area
and population, Germany would really have been a world power,
and the War, aside from all other factors, could have been ter-
minated favorably. * * .

644

Mein Kampe

Germany today is no world power. Even if our momentary mili-
tary impotence were overcome, we should no longer have any
claim to this title. What can a formation, as miserable in its re-
lation of population to area as the German Reich today, mean
on this planet? In an era when the earth is gradually being di-
vided up among states, some of which embrace almost entire
continents, we cannot speak of a world power in connection with
a formation whose political mother Country is limited to the ab-
surd area of five hundred thousand square kilometers.

From the purely territorial point of view, the area of the Ger-
man Reich vanishes completely as compared with that of the so-
called world powers. Let no one cite England as a proof to the
contrary, for England in reality is merely the great capital of the
British world empire which calls nearly a quarter of the earth’s
surface its own. In addition, we must regard as giant states,
first of all the American Union, then Russia and China. All are
spatial formations having in part an area more than ten times
greater than the present German Reich. And even France must
be counted among these states. Not only that she complements
her army to an ever-increasing degree from her enormous empire’s
reservoir of colored humanity, but racially as well, she is making
such.great progress in negrification that we can actually speak of
an African state arising on European soil. The colonial policy of
present-day France cannot be compared with that of Germany
in the past. If the development of France in the present style
were to be continued for three hundred years, the last renmants
of Frankish blood would be submerged in the developing Euro-
pean-African mulatto state. An immense self-contained area of
settlement from the Rhine to the Congo, filled with a lower race
gradually produced from continuous bastardization.

This distinguishes French colonial policy from the old German
one.

The former German colonial policy, like everything we did, was
carried out by halves. It neither increased the settlement area
of the German Reich, nor did it undertake any attempt — crimi-
nal though it would have been — to strengtheft the Reich by the

Historical Mission of National Socialism 645

use of black blood. The Askaris in German East Africa were a
short, hesitant step in this direction. Actually they served only
for the defense of the colonies themselves. The idea of bringing
black troops into a European battlefield, quite aside from its
practical impossibility in the World War, never existed even as a
design to be realized imder more favorable circumstances, while,
on the contrary, it was always regarded and felt by the French
as the basic reason for their ‘colonial activity. •

Thus, in the world today we see a number of power states,
some of which not only far surpass the strength of our German
nation in population, but whose area above all is the chief sup-
port of their political power. Never has the relation of the Ger-
man Reich to other existing world states been as unfavorable as
at the beginning of our history two thousand years ago and
again today. Then we were a young people, rushing headlong
into a world of great crumbling state formations, whose last
giant, Rome, we ourselves helped to fell. Today we find ourselves
in a world of great power states in process of formation, with our
own Reich sinking more and more into insignificance.

We must bear this bitter truth cooUy and soberly in mind. We
must follow and compare the German Reich through the centuries
in its relation to other states with regard to population and area.
I know that everyone will then come to the dismayed conclusion
which I have stated at the beginning of this discussion: Germany
is no longer a world power, regardless whether she is strong or weak
from the military point of view.

We have lost all proportion to the other great states of the
earth, and this thanks only to the positively catastrophic leader-
ship of our nation in the field of foreign affairs, thanks to our total
failure to be guided by what I should almost call a testamentary
aim in foreign policy, and thanks to the loss of any healthy in-
stinct and impulse of self-preservation.

If the National Socialist movement really wat^ts to be consecrated
by history with a great mission for our nation, it must be permeated
by knowledge and filled with pain at our true situation in this world;
boldly and conscious of its goal, it must take up the struggle against

646

Mein Kampe

the aimlessness and incompetence which have hitherto guided our Ger-
man nation in the line of foreign affairs. Then, without considera-
tion of ‘ traditions’ and prejudices, it must find the courage to gather
our people ’ and their strength for an advance along the road that will
lead this people from its present restricted living space to new la7td
and soil, and hence also free it from the danger of vanishing frotn
the earth or of serving others as a slave nation.

The National, Socialist inovement nhcst strive to eliminate the dis-
proportion between our population and our area — viewing this lat-
ter as a source of food as well as a basis for power politics — be-
tween our historical past and the hopelessness of our present im-
potence. And in this it must remain aware that we, as guardians
of the highest humanity on this earth, are bound by the highest
obligation, and the more it strives to bring the German people to
racial awareness so that, in addition to breeding dogs, horses,
and cats, they will have mercy on their own blood, the more it
win be able to meet this obligation.

* * *

ly characterize German policy up to now as aimless and in-
competent, the proof of my assertion lies in the actual failure of
this policy. If our people had been intellectually inferior or
cowardly, the results of its struggle on the earth could not be
worse than what we see before us today. Neither must the de-
velopment of the last decades before the War deceive us on this
score; for we cannot measure the strength of an empire by itself,
but only by comparison with other states. And just such a com-
parison furnishes proof that the increase in strength of the other
states was not only more even, but also greater in its ultimate ef-
fect; that consequently, despite its apparent rise, Germany’s
road actually diverged more and more from that of the other
states and fell far behind; in short, the difference in magnitudes
increased to our disfavor. Yes, as time went on, we fell behind
more and more even in population. But sincfe our people is cer-

Enduring Fruits of a Thousand Years

647

taiiily excelled by none on earth in heroism, in fact, allin all has
certainly given the most blood of aU the nations on earth for the
preservation of its existence, the failure can reside only in the
mistaken way in which it was given.

If we examine the political experiences of our people for more
than a thousand years in this connection, passing aU the in-
numerable wars and struggles in review and exa mining the pres-
ent end result they created, we shall be forced to admit that this
sea of blood has given rise to only three phenomena which we are
justified in claiming as enduring fruits of clearly defined actions
in the field of foreign and general politics:

(1) The colonization of the Ostmark, carried out mostly by
Bavarians;

(2) the acquisition and penetration of the territory east of the
Elbe; and

(3) the organization by the HohenzoUerns of the Brandenburg-
Prussian state as a model and nucleus for crystallization of a new
Reich.

An instructive warning for the future!

The first two great successes of our foreign policy ‘have re-
mained the most enduring. Without them our nation today would
no longer have any importance at aU. They were the first, but
unfortunately the only successful attempt to bring the rising
population into harmony with the quantity of our soil. And it
must be regarded as truly catastrophic that our German histo-
rians have never been able to estimate correctly these two achieve-
ments which are by far the greatest and most significant for the
future, but by contrast have glorified everything conceivable,
praised and admired fantastic heroism, innumerable adventurous
wars and struggles, instead of finally recognizing how unimportant
most of these events have been for the nation’s great line of
development.

The third great success of our political activity lies in the for-
mation of the Prussian state and the resultant cultivation of a
special state idea, as also of the German army’s instinct of self-
preservation and self-defense, adapted to the modern world and

648

Mein Kampf

put into organized form. The development of the idea of in-
dividual militancy into the duty of national militancy [con-
scription] has grown out of every state formation and every state
conception. The significance of this development cannot be over-
estimated. Through the discipline of the Prussian army organ-
ism, the German people, shot through with hyperindividualism
by their racial divisions, won back at least a part of the capacity
for organizatioh which they had long since lost. What other peo-
ples still primitively possess in their herd community instinct, we,
partially at least, regained artificially for our national community
through the process of military training. Hence the elimination
of universal conscription — which for dozens of other peoples
might be a matter of no importance — is for us fraught with the
gravest consequences. Ten German generations without correc-
tive and educational military training, left to the evil effects of
their racial and hence philosophical division — and our nation
would really have lost the last remnant of an independent e.xist-
cnce on this planet. Only through individual men, in the bosom of
foreign nations, could the German spirit make its contribution to
culture, and its origin would not even be recognized. Cultural
fertilizer, until the last rem^^lnt of Aryan-Nordic blood in us
would be corrupted or extinguished.

It is noteworthy that the significance of these real political
successes won by our nation in its struggles, enduring more than
a thousand years, were far better understood and appreciated
by our adversaries than by ourselves. Even today we still rave
about a heroism which robbed oar people of millions of its noblest
blood-bearers, but in its ultimate result remained totally fruitless.

The distinction between the real political successes of our peo-
ple and the national blood spent for fruitless aims is of the greatest
importance for our conduct in the present and the future.

IFe National Socialists trntst never under any circumstances join
in the foul ^ hurrah patriotism of our present bourgeois world. In
particular it is mortally dangerous to regard the last pre-War de-

' ‘iibel.’ In preparing the second edition, the frugal copy-reader substi-
tutes ‘iiblich,’ usual.

Clamor for the Old Frontiers

649

veto ptf tents as binding even in the slightest degree for our own course.
From the whole historical development of the nineteenth cen-
tury, not a single obligation can be derived which was grounded
in this period itself. In contrast to the conduct of the representa-
tives of this period, .we must again profess the highest aim of
all foreign policy, to wit: to bring the soil into Imrmony -with the
population. Yes, from the past we can only learn that, in setting
an objective for our political activity, we must I)roceed in two
directions: Land and soil as the goal of our foreign policy, and a
herw philosophically established, uniform foundation as the aim of
political activity at home.

* * *

I still wish briefly to take a position on the question as to what
extent the demand for soil and territory seems ethically and mor-
ally justified. This is necessary, since unfortunately, even in so-
caUed folkish circles, all sorts of unctuous big-mouths step for-
ward, endeavoring to set the rectification of the injustice of 1918
as the aim of the German nation’s endeavors in the field of foreign
affairs, but at the same time find it necessary to assure the jvhole
world of folkish brotherhood and sympathy.

I should like to make the following preliminary remarks: The
detnandfor restoration of the frontiers of 191 Ji- is a political absurdity
of such proportions and consequences as to make it seem a crime.
Quite aside from the fact that the Reich’s frontiers in 1914 were any-
thing but logical. For in reality they were neither complete in the
sense of embracing the people of German nationality, nor sensible
with regard to geo-military expediency. They were not the result of a
considered political action, but momentary frontiers in a political
struggle that was by no means concluded; partly, in fact, they were
the results of chance. With equal right and in many cases with
more right, some other sample year of German history could be
picked out, and the restoration of the conditions at that time
declared to be the aim of an activity in foreign affairs. The above

650

Mein Kampf

demand is entirely suited to our bourgeois society, which here as
elsewhere does not possess a single creative political idea for the
future, but lives only m the past, in fact, in the most immediate
past; for even their backward gaze does not extend beyond their
own times.^The law of inertia binds thern^ to a given situation
and causes them to resist any change in it, but without ever in-
creasing the activity of this opposition beyond the mere power of
perseverance. So it is obvious that the political horizon of these
people does not extend beyond the year 1914. By proclaiming the
restoration of th 9 se borders as the political aim of their activity',
they keep mending the crumbling league of our adversaries.
Only in this w^ay can it be explained that eight years after a world
struggle in which states, some of which had the most heterogene-
ous desires, took part, the coalition of the victors of those days
can stiU maintain itself in a more or less unbroken form.

All these states were at one time beneficiaries of the German
collapse. Fear of our strength caused the greed and envy of the
individual great powers among themselves to recede. By grab-
bing as much of the Reich as they could, they found the best
guard against a future uprising. A bad conscience and fear of our
people’s strength is stUl the most enduring cement to hold to-
gether the various members of this alliance.

And we do not disappoint them. By setting up the restoration
of the borders of 1914 as a political program for Germany, our
bourgeoisie frighten away every partner who might desire to leave
the league of our enemies, since he must inevitably fear to be at-
tacked singly and thereby lose the protection of his individual
fellow allies. Each single state feels concerned and threatened by
this slogan.

Moreover, it is senseless in two respects:

(1) because the instruments of power are lacking to remove it
from the vapors of club evening into reality; and

(2) because, if it could actually be realized, the outcome would
again be so pitiful that, by God, it would not be worth while to
risk the blood of our people for this.

For it should scarcely seem questionable to anyone that even

National Socialist Aim in Foreign Policy 651

the restoration of the frontiers of 1914 could be achieved only by
blood. Only childish and naive minds can lull themselves in the
idea that they can bring about a correction of Versailles by wheed-
ling and begging. Quite aside from the fact that such an attempt
would presuppose a man of Talleyrand’s talents, which we do not
possess. One half of our political figures consist of extremely
sly, but equally spineless elements which are hostile toward our
nation to begin with, while the other is composed of good-
natured, harmless, and easy-going soft-heads. Moreover, the
times have changed since the Congress of Vienna : Today it is not
princes and princes’ mistresses who haggle and bargain over state
borders; it is the inexorable Jew who struggles for his dominalion
over the nations. No nation can remove this hand from its throat
except by the sword. Only the assembled and concentrated might
of a national passion rearing up in its strength can defy the inter-
national enslavement of peoples. Such a process is and remains
a bloody one.

If, however, we harbor the conviction that the German future,
regardless what happens, demands the supreme sacrifice, quite
aside from aU considerations of political expediency as such, we
must set up an aim worthy of this sacrifice and fight for it.

The boundaries of the year 1914 mean nothing at aH for the
German future. Neither did they provide a defense of the past,
nor would they contain any strength for the future. Through
them the German nation will neither achieve its inner integrity,
nor will its sustenance be safeguarded by them, nor do these
boundaries, viewed from the military standpoint, seem expedient
or even satisfactory, nor finally can they improve the relation in
which we at present find ourselves toward the other world powers,
or, better expressed, the real world powers. The lag behind Eng-
land will not be caught up, the magnitude of the Union will not
be achieved; not even France would experience a material diminu-
tion of her world-political importance.

Only one thin g would be certain: even with a favorable out-
come, such an attempt to restore the borders of 1914 would lead
to a further bleeding of oiu: national body, so much so that there

652

Meix Kaupe

would be no worth-while blood left to stake for the dedaons and
actions really to secure the nation’s future. On the contiaiy,
drunk with such a shallow success, we should renounce any fur-
ther goals, all the more readily as 'nation^d honor’ would be re-
paired and, for the moment at least, a few doors would have been
reopened to commercial development. .

As opposed to this, we National Socialists must hold unflinch-
ingly to our aim in foreign policy, namely, to secure for the German
people the land and soil to lukich they are efUilled on this earth.
And this action .is the only one which, before God and our Ger-
man posterity, would make any sacrifice of blood seem justified:
before God, since we have been put on this earth with the mission
of eternal struggle for our daily bread, beings who receive nothing
as a gift, and who owe their position as lords of the earth only to
the genius and the courage with which they can conquer and de-
fend it ; and before our German posterity in so far as we have shed
no citizen’s blood out of which a thousand others are not be-
queathed to posterity. The soil on w’hich some day German
generations of peasants can beget powerful sons will sanction the
investment of the sons of today, and will some day acquit the
responsible statesmen of blood-guilt and sacrifice of the people,
even 'if they are persecuted by their contemporaries.

And I must sharply attack those folkish pen-pushers who claim
to regard such an acquisition of soil as a ‘breach of sacred human
rights’ and attack it as such in their scribblings. One never
knows who stands behind these fellows. But one thing is certain,
that the confusion they can create is desirable and convenient
to our national enemies. By such an attitude they help to
weaken and destroy from within our people’s will for the only
correct w^ay of defending their vital needs. For no people on
this earth possesses so much as a square yard of territory on the
strength of a higher will or superior right. Just as Germany’s
frontiers are fortuitous frontiers, momentary frontiers in the cur-
rent political struggle of any period, so are the boundaries of
other nations’ living space. And just as the sljape of our earth’s
surface can seerti immutable as granit^ only to the thoughtless

Na Sesttikcekialixy in Foreign Policy

653

soft-headj biit in. reality only represents at each period an ap-
parent pause in a continuous developnient, created by the mighty
forces of Nature in a process of continuous growth, only to be
transformed or destroyed tomorrow by greater forc^, likewise
the boundaxies of livirig spaces in the life of nations.

State boundaries are made by man and changed by man.

The fact that a nation has succeeded in acquiring an imdue
amount of soil constitutes no higher obligation that it should be
recognized eternally. At most it proves the strength of the con-
querors and the weakness of the nations. And in this case, right
lies in this strength alone. If the German nation today, penned
into an impossible area, faces a lamentable future, this is no more
a commandment of Fate than revolt against this state of affairs
constitutes an affront to Fate. Xo more than any higher power
has promised another nation more territory than the German na-
tion, or is offended by the fact of this unjust distribution of the
soil. Just as our ancestors did not receive the soil on which we
live today as a gift from Heaven, but had to fight for it at the
risk of their lives, in the future no folkish grace will win soil
for us and hence life for our people, but only the mighf of a vic-
torious sword.

lluch as all of us today recognize the necessity of a’ reckoning
with France, it would remain ineffectual in the long run if it repre-
sented the whole of our aim in foreign policy. It can and will
achieve meaning only if it offers the rear cover for an enlarge-
ment of our people’s living space in Eiurope. For it is not in
colonial acquisitions that we must see the solution of this problem,
but exclusi-vely in the acquisition of a territory for settlement,
which will enhance the area of the mother country, and hence
not only keep the new settlers in the most intimate community
with the land of their origin, but secure for the total area those
advantages which lie in its unified magnitude.

The folkish movement must not be the champion of other
peoples, blit the vanguard fighter of its own. Otherwise it is
superffuous and above all has no right to sulk about the past.
For in that case it is behaving in e.xactly the same way. The old.

654

Mein Kampf

German policy was wrongly determined by dynastic considera-
tions, and the future policy must not be directed by cosmopoli-
tan folkish drivel. In particular, we are not constables guarding
the well-known ‘poor little nations,’ but soldiers of our own na-
tion.

But we National Socialists must go further. The right to possess
soil can become a duty if without extension of its soil a great nation
seems doomed to destruction. And most especially when not some
little nigger nation or other is involved, but the Germanic mother
of life, which has given the present-day world its cultural picture.
Germany will either be a world power or there will be no Germany.
And for world power she needs that magnitude which will give
her the position she needs in the present period, and life to her
dtizens.

* * *

And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the
foreign policy tendency of our pre-War period. We take up where
we broke ojf six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German
nmertKnt lo the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land
in the east. At long last we break off the colonial and commercial
policy of the pre-War period and shift to the soil policy of the future.

If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in
mind only Russia and her vassal border states.

Here Fate itself seems desirous of giving us a sign. By hangin g
Prussia to Bolshevism, it robbed the Russian nation of that intel-
ligentsia which previously brought about and guaranteed its
existence as a state. For the organization of a Russian state for-
mation was not the result of the political abilities of the Slavs in
Russia, but only a wonderful example of the state-forming effi-
cacity of the German element in an inferior race. Numerous
mighty empires on earth have been created in this way. Lower
nations led by Germanic organizers and overlords have more than
once grown to be mighty state formations and have endured as

Resumption oe Eastern Policy

655

long as the racial nucleus of the creative state race maintained it-
self. For centuries Russia drew nourishment from this Germanic
nucleus of its upper leading strata. Today it can be regarded as
almost totally exterminated and extinguished. It has been re-
placed by the Jew. Iinpossible as it is for the Russian by himself
to shake off the yoke of the Jew by his own resources, it is equally
impossible for the Jew to maintain the mighty empire forever.
He himself is no element of organization, but a ferment of de-
composition. The Persian ^ empire in the east is ripe for collapse.
And the end of Jewish rule in Russia wiU also be the end of Rus-
sia as a state. We have been chosen by Fate as witnesses of a
catastrophe which will be the mightiest confirmation of the sound-
ness of the folkish theory.

Our task, the mission of the National Socialist movement, is to
bring our own people to such political insight that they will not see
their goal for the future in the breath-taking sensation of a new
Alexander's conquest, but in the industrious work of the German
plow, to which the sword need only give soil.

* * *

It goes without sa3dng that the Jews announce the sharpest re-
sistance to such a policy. Better than anyone else they sense the
significance of this action for their own future. This very fact
should teach all really national-minded men the correctness of
such a reorientation. Unfortunately, the opposite is the case.
Not only in German-National, but even in ‘ folkish ’ circles, the
idea of such an eastern policy is violently attacked, and, as al-
most always in such matters, they appeal to a higher authority.
The spirit of Bismarck is cited to cover a policy which is as sense-
less as it is impossible and in the highest degree harmful to the
German nation. Bismarck in his time, they say, always set store
on good relations with Russia. This, to a certain extent, is true.
But they forget to mention that he set just as great store on good
‘ Second edition has ‘giant’ instead of ‘Persian.’

656

Mein Kampf

relalions with Italy, for example; in fact, that the same Herr von
Bismarck once made an alliance with Italy in order to finish off
Austria the more easily. Why, then, don’t they continue this
policy? ‘Because the Italy of today is not the Italy of those
days,’ they will say. Very well. But then, honored sirs, will you
permit the objection that present-day Russia is not the Russia
of those days either? It never entered Bismarck’s head to lay
down a political course tactically and theoretically for all time.
In this respect he was too much master of the moment to tie his
hands in such a way. The question, therefore, must not be: What
did Bismarck do in his time? But rather: What would he do today?
And this question is easier to answer. With his political astute-
ness, he would neaer ally himself with a state that is doomed to
destruction.

Furthermore, Bismarck even then viewed the German colonial
and commercial policy with mixed feelings, since for the moment
he was concerned only with the surest method of internally con-
solidating the state formation he had created. And this was the
only reason why at that time he welcomed the Russian rear coveij,
which gave him a free hand in the west. But what was profitable
to Germany then would be detrimental today.

As earl]^ as 1920-21, when the young National Socialist move-
ment began slowly to rise above the political horizon, and here
and there was referred to as the movement for German freedom,
the party was approached by various quarters with an attempt to
create a certain bond between it and the movements for freedom
in other countries. This was in the line of the ‘League of Oppressed
Nations,’ propagated by many. Chiefly involved were representa-
tives of various Balkan states, and some from Eg 3 q)t and India,
who as individuals always impressed me as pompous big-mouths
without any realistic background. But there were not a few Ger-
mans, especially in the nationalist camp, who let themselves be
dazzled by such inflated Orientals and readily accepted any old
Indian or Egyptian student from God knows where as a ‘repre-
sentative’ of India or Egypt. These people never realized that
they were usually dealing with persons who had absolutely

The ‘League of Oppressed Nations’

657

nothing behind them, and above all were authorized by no one
to conclude any pact with anyone, so that the practical result of
any relations with such elements was nil, unless the time wasted
were booked as a special loss. I always resisted such' attempts.
Not only that I had better things to do than twiddle away weeks
in fruitless ‘ conferences!’ but even if these men had been author-
ized representatives of such nations, I regarded the whole business
as useless, in fact, harmful. ■* •

Even in peacetime it was bad enough that the German alliance
policy, for want of any aggressive intentions of our own, ended in
a defensive union of ancient states, pensioned by world history.
The alliance with Austria as well as Turkey had little to be said
for them. While the greatest military and industrial states on
earth banded into an active aggressive union, we collected a few
antique, impotent state formations and with this decaying rub-
bish attempted to face an active world coalition. Germany re-
ceived a bitter accounting for this error in foreign policy. But this
accounting does not seem to'have been bitter enough to prevent
our eternal dreamers from falling headlong into the same error.
For the attempt to disarm the almighty victors through a
‘League of Oppressed Nations* is not only ridiculous, but cata-
strophic as well. It is catastrophic because it distracts our people
again and again from the practical possibilities, making them de-
vote themselves to imaginative, yet fruitless hopes and illusions.
The German of today really resembles the drowning man who
grasps at every straw. And this can apply even to men who are
otherwise exceedingly well educated. If any will-o’-the-wisp of
hope, however unreal, turns up anywhere, these men are off at a
trot, chasing after the phantom. Whether it is a League of Op-
pressed Nations, a League of Nations, or any other fantastic new
invention, it will be sure to find thousands of credulous souls.

I stiU remember the hopes, as childish as they were incompre-
hensible, which suddenly arose in folkish circles in 1920-21, to the
effect that British power was on the verge of collapse in India.
Some Asiatic jugglers, for all I care they may have been real
‘fighters for Indisfn freedom,’ who at that time were wandering ^

€58

Mein Kampf

around Europe, had managed to sell otherwise perfectly reason-
able people the id&e, fixe that the British Empire, which has its
pivot in India, was on the verge of collapse at that very point.
Of course, 'it never entered their heads that here again their own
wish was the sole father of all their thoughts. No more did the
inconsistency of their own hopes. For by expecting the end of the
British Empire to follow from a collapse of British rule in India,
they themselves admitted that Indid was of the most paramount
importance to England.

It is most likely, however, that this vitally important question
is not a profound secret known only to German-folkish prophets;
presumably it is known also to the helmsmen of English destiny.
It is really childish to suppose that the men in England cannot
correctly estimate the importance of the Indian Empire for the
British world union. And if anyone imagines that England would
let India go without staking her last drop of blood, it is only a
sorry sign of absolute failure to learn from the World War, and of
total misapprehension and ignorance on the score of Anglo-
Saxon determination. It is, furthermore, a proof of the German’s
total ignbrance regarding the whole method of British penetra-
tion and administration of this empire. England will lose India
either if her own administrative machinery falls a prey to racial
decomposition (which at the moment is completely out of the ques-
tion in India) or if she is bested by the sword of a powerful enemy.
Indian agitators, however, will never achieve this. How hard it
is to best England, we Germans have sufficiently learned. Quite
aside from the fact that I, as a man of Germanic blood, would, in
spite of everything, rather see India under English rule than under
any other.

Just as lamentable are the hopes in any mythical uprising in
Eg3q3t. The ‘Holy War’ can give our German Schafkopf players
the pleasant thrill of t hinki ng that now perhaps others are ready
to shed their blood for us — for this cowardly speculation, to tell
the truth, has always been the silent father of all hopes; in reality
it would come to an infernal end under the fire of English machine-
gun companies and the hail of fragmentation laombs.

German Alliance with Russia?

6S9

It just happens to be impossible to overwhelm with a coalition
of cripples a powerful state that is determined to stake, if neces-
sary, its last drop of blood for its existence. As a folkish man, who
appraises the value of men on a racial basis, I am prevented by
mere knowledge of the racial inferiority of these so-caUed ‘op-
pressed nations’ from linking the destiny of my own people with
theirs.

And today we must tak6 exactly the same jjosition toward
Russia. Present-day Russia, divested of her Germanic upper
stratum, is, quite aside from the private intentions of her new
masters, no aUy for the German nation’s fight for freedom. Con-
sidered from the purely military angle, the relations would be simply
catastrophic in case of war between Germany and Russia and West-
ern Europe, and probably against all the rest of the world. The
struggle would take place, not on Russian, but on German soil, and
Germany would not be able to obtain the least effective support
from Russia. The present German Reich’s instruments of power
are so lamentable and so useless for a foreign war, that no de-
fense of our borders against Western Europe, including England,
would be practicable, and particularly the German industrial
region would lie defenselessly exposed to the concentrated aggres-
sive arms of our foes. There is the additional fact thart between
Germany and Russia there lies the Polish state, completely in
French hands. In case of a war between Germany and Russia
and Western Europe, Russia would first have to subdue Poland
before the first soldier could be sent to the western front. Yet it
is not so much a question of soldiers as of technical armament.
In this respect, the World War situation would repeat itself, only
much more horribly. Just as German industry was then drained
for our glorious allies, and, technically speaking, Germany had to
fight the war almost single-handed, likewise in this struggle Rus-
sia would be entirely out of the picture as a technical factor. We
•could oppose practically nothing to the general motorization of
the world, which in the next war will manifest itself overwhelm-
ingly and decisively. For not only that Germany herself has re-
mained shamefully backward in this aU-important field, but ‘from

660

Mein Kampf

the little she possesses she would have to sustain Russia, which
even today cannot claim possession of a single factory capable of
producing a motor vehicle that really runs. Thus, such a war
would assiime the character of a plain massacre. Germany’s
youth would be bled even more than the last time, for as always
the burden of the fighting would rest only 'upon us, and the result
would be inevitable defeat.

But even supposing that a miracle' should occur and that such
a struggle did not end with the total annihilation of Germany,
the ultimate outcome would only be that the German nation,
bled white, would remain as before bounded by great military
states and that her real situation would hence have changed in
no way.

Let no one argue that in concluding an alliance with Russia we
need not immediately think of war, or, if we did, that we could
thoroughly prepare for it. An alliance whose him does not embrace
a plan for war is senseless and worthless. Alliances are concluded
only for struggle. And even if the clash should be never so far
away at the moment when the pact is concluded, the prospect of
a military involvement is nevertheless its cause. And do not
imagine that any power would ever interpret the meaning of such
an aUiancein any other way. Either a German-Russian coalition
would remain on paper, or from the letter of the treaty it would be
translated into visible reality — and the rest of the world would
be warned. How naive to suppose that in such a case England
and France would wait a decade for the German-Russian alliance
to complete its technical preparations. No, the storm would break
over Germany with the speed of lightning.

And so the very fact of the conclusion of an alliance with Russia
embodies a plan for the next war. Its outcome would be the end of
Germany.

On top of this there is the following:

1. The present rulers of Russia have no idea of honorably enuring
into an alliance, let alone observing one.

Never forget that the rulers of present-day Russia are common
blood-stained criminals; that they are the scum of humanity

German Alliance with Russia?

661

which, favored by circumstances, overran a great state in a tragic
hour, slaughtered and wiped out thousands of her leading intel-
ligentsia in wild blood lust, and now for almost ten years have
been carrying on the most cruel and tyrannical regime of all time.
Furthermore, do not forget that these rulers belong to a race which
combines, in a rare mixture, bestial cruelty and an inconceivable
gift for lying, and which today more than ever is conscious of a
mission to impose its bloody oppression on the whole world. Do
not forget that the international Jew who completely dominates
Russia today regards Germany, not as an ally, but as a state
destined to the same fate. And you do not make pacts with anyone
whose sole interest is the destruction of his partner. Above all, you
do not make them with elements to whom no pact would be
sacred, since they do not live in this world as representatives of
honor and sincerity, but as champions of deceit, lies, theft, plun-
der, and rapine. If a man believes that he can enter into profitable
connections with parasites, he is like a tree trying to conclude for
its own profit an agreement with a mistletoe.

2. The danger to which Russia succumbed is always present for
Germany. Only a bourgeois simpleton is capable of imagining that
Bolshevism has been exorcised. With his superficial thinking he
has no idea that this is an instinctive process; that is, tlie striving
of the Jewish people for world domination, a process which is just
as natural as the urge of the Anglo-Saxon to seize domination of
the earth. And just as the Anglo-Saxon pursues this course in
his own way and carries on the fight with his own weapons, like-
wise the Jew. He goes his way, the way of sneaking in among the
nations and boring from within, and he fights with his weapons,
with lies and slander, poison and corruption, intensifying the
struggle to the point of bloodily exterminating his hated foes.
In Russian Bolsheroism we must see the attempt undertaken by the
Jews in the twentieth century to achieve world domination. Just as
in other epochs they strove to reach the same goal by other,
though inwardly related processes. Their endeavor lies pro-
foundly rooted in^ their essential nature. No more than another
nation renounces of its ^wn accord the pursuit of its impulse for*

662

Mein Kampf

the expansion of its power and way of life, but is compelled by
outward circumstances or else succumbs to impotence due to the
s3maptoms of old age, does the Jew break off his road to world
dictatorship out of voluntary renunciation, or because he re-
presses his eternal urge. He, too, will either be thrown back in
his course by forces lying outside himself, or all his striving for
world domination will be ended by his own dying out. But the
impotence of nations, their own death from old age, arises from
the abandonment of their blood purity. And this is a thing that
the Jew preserves better than any other people on earth. And
so he advances on his fatal road until another force comes forth
to oppose him, and in a mighty struggle hurls the heaven-stormer
back to Lucifer.

Germany is today the next great war aim of Bolshevism. It
requires all the force of a young missionary idea to raise our peo-
ple up again, to free them from the snares of this international
serpent, and to stop the inner contamination of our blood, in
order that the forces of the nation thus set free can be thrown in
to safeguard our nationality, and thus can prevent a repetition
of the recent catastrophes down to the most distant future. If
we pmsue this aim, it is sheer lunacy to ally oiurselves with a
power whose master is the mortal enemy of our future. How can
we expect to free our own people from the fetters of this poisonous
embrace if we walk right into it? How shall we explain Bolshe-
vism to the German worker as an accursed crime against human-
' ity if we ally ourselves with the organizations of this spawn of hell,
thus recognizing it in the largef sense? By what right shall we
condemn a member of the broad masses for his sympathy with an
outlook if the very leaders of the state choose the representatives
of this outlook for allies?

The fight against Jewish world Bolshevizaiion requires a clear
attitude toward Soviet Russia. You cannot drive out the Devil with
Beelzebub.

If today even folkish circles raw about an alliance with Russia,
they should just look around them in Germapy and see whose
support they find in their efforts. Or have folkish men lately be-

Germany and Russia Before the War

663

gun to view an activity as beneficial to the German people which
is recommended and promoted by the international Marast
press? Since when do folkish men fight with armor held out to
them by a Jewish squire?

There is one main cjtarge that could he raised against the old Ger-
man Reich with regard to its alliance policy: not, howeoer, that it
Jailed to maintain, good relations with Russia, but only that it ruined
its relations with everyone by continuous shilly-sfuillying, in the
pathological weakness of trying to preserve world peace at any price.

1 openly confess .that even in the pre-War period I would have
thought it sounder if Germany, renouncing her senseless colonial
policy and renouncing her merchant marine and war fleet, had
concluded an alliance with England against Russia, thus passing
from a feeble global policy to a determined European policy of
territorial acquisition on the continent.

I have not forgotten the insolent threat which the pan-Slavic
Russia of that time dared to address to Germany; I have not for-
gotten the constant practice mobilizations, whose sole purpose
was an affront to Germany; I cannot forget the mood of public
opinion in Russia, which outdid itself in hateful outbursts against
our people iind our Reich; I cannot forget the big Russian news-
papers, which were always more enthusiastic about Fi-ancp than
about us.

But in spite of all that, before the War there would still have
been a second way: we could have propped ourselves on Russia
and turned against England.

Today conditions are different? If before the War we could have
choked down every possible sentiment and gone with Russia, to-
day it is no longer possible. The hand of the world dock has
moved forward since then, and is loudly striking the hour in
which the destiny of our nation must be decided in one way or
another. The process of consolidation in which the great states
of the earth are involved at the moment is for us the last warning
signal to stop and search our hearts, to lead our people out of the
dream world back to hard reality, and show them the way to the
future which alone wiU lead the old Reich to a new golden' age. .

664

Mein Kaiipt

If the National Socialist movement frees itself from all illusions
with regard to this great and all-important task, and accepts
reason as its sole guide, the catastrophe of 1918 can some day be-
come an infinite blessing for the future of our nation. Out of this
collapse our nation will arrive at a complete reorientation of its
activity in foreign relations, and, furthermore, reinforced within
by its new philosophy of life, will also achieve outwardly a final
stabili 2 ation of Its foreign policy. Then at last it will acquire what
England possesses and even Russia possessed, and what again and
again induced France to make the same decisions, essentially
correct from the viewpoint of her own interests, to wit: A politi-
cal tesianient.

The political testament of the German nation to govern its
outward activity for aU time should and must be:

Never suffer the rise of two continental powers in Europe. Regard
any attempt to organize a second military power on the German
frontiers, even if only in the form of creating a state capable of mili-
tary strength, as an attack on Germany, and in it see not only the
right, blit also the duty, to employ all means up to armed force to
prevent the rise of such a state, or, if one has already arisen, to
smash it again. — See to it that the strength of our nation is founded,
not on, colonies, but on the soil of our European homeland. Never
regard the Reich as secure unless for centuries to come it can give
every scion of our people his own parcel of soil. Never forget that
the most sacred right on this earth is a man's right to have earth to
till with his own hands, and the most sacred sacrifice the blood that a
man sheds for this earth. •

* * #

I should not like to conclude these reflections without pointing
once again to the sole alliance possibility which exists for us at the
moment in Europe. In the previous chapter on the anignre
problem I have already designated England and Italy as the only
two states in Europe with which a closer relationship v/ould be

Alliance with England-and Italy

665

desirable and promising for us. Here I shall briefly touch on the
military importance of such an alliance.

The military consequences of concluding this alliance would in
every respect be the opposite of the consequences of an alliance
with Russia. The most important consideration, first of all, is
the fact that in itself an approach to England and Italy in no way
conjures up a wan danger. France, the sole power which could con-
ceivably oppose the alliance, would not be in a pbsition to do so.
And consequently the alliance would give Germany the possibility
of peacefully making those preparations for a reckoning with France,
which would have to be made in any event within the scope of such a
coalition. For the significant feature of such an alliance lies pre-
cisely in the fact that upon its conclusion Germany would not sud-
denly be exposed to a hostile invasion, but that the opposing al-
liance would break of its own accord; the Entente, to which we
owe such infinite misfortune, would be dissolved, and hence
France, the mortal enemy of our fiation, would be isolated. Even
if this success is limited at first to moral effect, it would suffice
to give Germany freedom of movement to an extent which today
is scarcely conceivable. For the law of action would be in the hands
of the new European Anglo-German-Italian alliance and no longer
with France. ’ .

The f urther result would be that at one stroke Germany would be
freed from her unfavorable strategic position. The most powerful
protection on our flank on the one hand, complete guaranty of our
food and raw materials on the other, would be the beneficial ef-
fect of the new constellation of states.

But almost more important would be the fact that the new league
would embrace states which in technical productivity almost comple-
ment one another in many respects. For the first time Germany
would have allies who would not drain our own economy like
leeches, but could and would contribute their share to the richest
supplementation of our technical armament.

And do not overlook the final fact that in both cases we should
be dealing with allie s who cannot be compared with Turkey or
present-day Russia. The greatest world power on earth and a youth-.

666

Mein Kampf

fid national state woidd ojffer different premises for a struggle in
Europe than the putrid state corpses with which Germany allied her-
self in the l^t war.

Assuredly, as I emphasized in the last chapter, the difficulties
opposing such an alliance are great. But was the formation of the
Entente, for instance, any less difficult? What the- genius of
a King Edward VII achieved, in part almost counter to natural in-
terests, we, too, htust and will achieve, provided we are so inspired
by our awareness of the necessity of such a development that with
astute self-control, we determine our actions accordingly. And this
will become possible in the moment when, imbued with admonish-
ing distress,^ we pursue, not the diplomatic aimlessness of the
last decades, but a conscious and determined course, and stick to
it. Neither western nor eastern orientation must be the fidure goal of
our foreign policy, but an eastern policy in the sense of acquiring the
necessary soil for our German people. Since for this we require
strength, and since France, the mortal enemy of our nation, in-
exorably strangles us and robs us of our strength, we must take upon
ourselves every sacrifice whose consequences are calculated to contri-
bute to the annihilation of French efforts toward hegemony in Europe.
Today every power is our natural ally, which like us feels French
domination on the continent lo be intolerable. No path to such a
power can be too hard for us, and no renunciation can seem unut-
terable if only the end result offers the possibility of downing our
grimmest enemy. Then, if we can cauterize and dose the biggest
wound, we can calmly leave the cure of our slighter wounds to the
soothing effects of time.

Today, of course, we are subjected to the hateful yapping of
the enemies of our people within. We National Socialists must
never let this divert us from proclaiming what in our innermost
conviction is absolutely necessary. Today, it is true, we must
brace ourselves against the current of a public opinion con-
founded by Jewish guile exploiting German gullibility; sometimes,
it is true, the waves break harshly and angrily about us, but he
who swims with the stream is more easily overlooked than he who

^ ‘ erf iillt von der Mahnenden Not,’ a Wagnerism.

The Basis of Eastern Policy

667

bucks the waves. Today we are a reef; in a few years Fate may
raise us up as a dam against which the general stream will break,
and flow into a new bed.

It is, therefore, necessary that the National Socialist movement
be recognized and established in the eyes of all as the champion
of a definite political purpose. Whalever Heaven may have in store
for us, let men recognize us by our very visor I

Once ‘we ourselves recognize the crying need "which must de-
termine our conduct in foreign affairs, from this knowledge will
flow the force of perseverance which we sometimes need when,
beneath the drumfire of our hostile press hounds, one or another
of us is seized with fear and there creeps upon him a faint desire
to grant a concession at least in some field, and howl with the
wolves, in order not to have everyone against him.

CHAPTER

XV

The Right of Emergency Defense

TQe ABiDSTiCE of November, 1918, ush-
ered in a policy which in all human probability was bound to lead
gradually to total submission. Historical examples of a similar
nature show that nations which lay down their arms without
compelling reasons prefer in the ensuing period to accept the
greatest humiliations and extortions rather than attempt to
change their fate by a renewed appeal to force.

This is humanly understandable. A shrewd victor will, if pos-
sible, always present his demands to the vanquished in install-
ments., And then, with a nation that has lost its character — and
this is the case of every one which voluntarily submits — he
can be sure that it will not regard one more of these individual
oppressions as an adequate reason for taking up arms again.
The more extortions are willingly accepted in this way, the more
unjustified it strikes people finally to take up the defensive
against a new, apparently isolated, though constantly recurring,
oppression, especially when, aH in all, so much more and greater
misfortune has already been borne in patient silence.

The fall of Carthage is the most horrible picture of such a slow
execution of a people through its own deserts.

That is why Clausewitz in his Drn Bekennlnisse ^ incomparably
singles out this idea and nails it fast for all time, when he says:

* Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), the eminent military strategist. His
'.chief work is Vom Krieg.

Nothing Accomplished by Submission

669

‘That the stain of a cowardly submission can never be ef-
faced; that this drop of poison in the blood of a people is passed
on to posterity and will paralyze and undermine the strength of
later generations’; that, on the other hand, ‘even the loss of this
freedom after a bloody and honorable struggle assures the re-
birth of a people and is 'the seed of life from which some day a new
tree will strike fqst roots.’

Of course, a people that has lost aU honor and character will not
concern itself with such teachings. For no one who takes them to
heart can sink so low; only he who forgets them, or no longer
wants to know them, collapses. Therefore, we* must not expect
those who embody a spineless submission suddenly to look into
their hearts and, on the basis of reason and aU human experience,
begin to act differently than before. On the contrary, it is these
men in particular who will dismiss all such teachings until either
the nation is definitely accustomed to its yoke of slavery or until
better forces push to the surface, to wrest the power from the
hands of the infamous spoilers. In the first case these people
usually do not feel so badly, since not seldom they are appointed
by the shrewd victors to the ofiBce of slave overseer, which these
spineless natures usually wield more mercilessly over their people
than any foreign beast put in by the enemy himself. •

The development since 1918 shows us that in Germany the hope
of winning the victor’s favor by voluntary submission unfor-
tunately determines the political opinions and the actions of the
broad masses in the most catastrophic way. I attach special im-
portance to emphasizing the hroad masses, because I cannot bring
myself to profess the belief that the commissions and omissions
of our people’s leaders are attributable to the same ruinous lunacy.
As the leadership of our destinies has, since the end of the War,
been quite openly furnished by Jews, we really cannot assume
that faulty knowledge alone is the cause of our misfortune; we
must, on the contrary, hold the conviction that conscious purpose
is destroying our nation. And once we examine the apparent
madness of our nation’s leadership in the field of foreign affairs
from this standpoint, it is revealed as the subtlest, ice-cold logic, ^

670

Mein Kampf

in the service of the Jewish idea and struggle for world conquest.

And thus, it becomes understandable that the same time-span,
which from 1806 to 1813 sufficed to imbue a totally collapsed
Prussia with new vital energy and determination for struggle,
today has not only elapsed unused, but, on the contrary, has led
to an ever-greater weakening of our state.'

Seven years after November, 1918, the Treaty of Locarno was
signed. •

The course of events was that indicated above: Once the dis-
graceful armistice had been signed, neither the energy nor the
courage could be summoned suddenly to oppose resistance to our
foes’ repressive measures, which subsequently were repeated
over and over. Our enemies were too shrewd to demand too
much at once. They always limit their extortions to the amount
which, in their opinion — and that of the German leadership —
would at the moment be bearable enough so that an explosion of
popular feeling need not be feared. But the more of these in-
dividual dictates had been signed, the less justified it seemed, be-
cause of a single additional extortion or exacted humiliation, to
do the thing that had not been done because of so many others:
to offer resistance. For this is the ‘drop of poison ’ of which Clause-
witz speaks: the spinelessness which once begun must increase
more and more and which gradually becomes the foulest heritage,
burdening every future decision. It can become a terrible lead
weight, a weight which a nation is not likely to shake off, but
which finally drags it down into the existence of a slave race.

Thus, in Germany edicts of disarmament alternated with edicts
of enslavement, political emasculation with economic pillage, and
finally created that moral spirit which can regard the Dawes
Plan as a stroke of good fortune and the Treaty of Locarno as a
success. Viewing all this from a higher vantage-point, we can
speak of one single piece of good fortune in all this misery, which
is that, though men can be befuddled, the heavens cannot be
bribed. For their blessing remained absent: since then hardship
and care have been the constant companions of our people, and
our one faithful ally has been misery. Destiny inade no exception

Persecution of Unwelcome Prophets

671

in this case, but gave us what we deserved. Since we no longer
know how to value honor, it teaches us at least to appreciate
freedom in the matter of bread. By now people have learned to
cry out for bread, but one of these days they wiU pray for freedom.

Bitter as was the collapse of our nation in the years after 1918,
and obvious at that veiy time, every man who dared prophesy
even then what later always materialized was violently and reso-
lutely persecuted. Wretched and bad as the leadfers of our nation
were, they were equally arrogant, and especially when it came to
ridding themselves of undesired, because unpleasant, prophets.
We were treated to the spectacle (as we still are today!) of the
greatest parliamentary thick-heads, regular saddlers and glove-
makers — and not only by profession, which in itself means
nothing — suddenly setting themselves on the pedestal of states-
men, from which they could lecture down at plain ordinary mor-
tals. It had and has nothing to do with the case that such a
‘statesman ’ by the sixth month of his activity is shown up as the
most incompetent windbag, the butt of everyone’s ridicide and
contempt, that he doesn’t know which way to turn and has pro-
vided unmistakable proof of his total incapacity! No, that makes
no difference, on the contrary: the more lacking the parliamentary
statesmen of this Republic are in real accomplishment, the more
furiously they persecute those who expect accomplishments from
them, who have the audacity to point out the failure of their pre-
vious activity and predict the failure of their future moves. But
if once you finally pin down one of these parliamentary honora-
bles, and this political showmaft really cannot deny the collapse
of his whole activity and its results any longer, they find thou-
sands and thousands of grounds for excusing their lack of success,
and there is only one that they will not admit, namely, that they
themselves are the main cause of all evil. , .

* * *

By the winter of 1922-23, at the latest, it should have been

672

Mein Kampf

generally understood that even after the conclusion of peace
France was still endeavoring with iron logic to achieve the war
aim she had originally had in mind. For no one will be likely to
believe that France poured out the blood of her people — never
too rich to begin with — for four and a hah .years in the most de-
cisive struggle of her history, only to have the damage previously
done made good by subsequent reparations. Even Alsace-Lor-
raine in itself would not explain the energy with which the French
carried on the War, if it had not been a part of French foreign
policy’s really great political program for the future. And this
goal is: the dissolution of Germany into a hodge-podge of little
states. That is what chauvinistic France fought for, though at
the same time in reality it sold its people as mercenaries to the m-
ternational world Jew.

This French war aim would have been attainable by the War
alone if, as Paris had first hoped, the struggle had taken place on
German soil. Suppose that the bloody battles of the World War
had been fought, not on the Somme, in Flanders, in Artois, before
Warsaw, Nijni-Novgorod, Kovno, Riga, and all the other places,
but in Germany, on the Ruhr and the Main, on the Elbe, at
Hanover, Leipzig, Nuremberg, etc., and you will have to agree
that this would have offered a possibility of breaking up Ger-
many. It is very questionable whether our young federative
state could for four and a half years have survived the same test
of strain as rigidly centralized France, oriented solely toward her
uncontested center in Paris. The fact that this gigantic struggle
of nations occurred outside the bbrders of our fatherland was not
only to the immortal credit of the old army, it was also the great-
est good fortune for the German future. It is my firm and heart-
felt conviction, and sometimes almost a source of anguish to me,
that otherwise there would long since have been no German
Reich, but only ‘ German states.’ And this is the sole reason why
the blood of our fallen friends and brothers has at least not
flowed entirely in vain.

Thus everything turned out differently! Tijie, Germany col-
lapsed like a flash in November, 1918. But when the catastrophe

Inexorable Political Aim or France

673

occurred in the homeland, our field armies were still deep in
enemy territory. The first concern of France at that time was
not the dissolution of Germany, but: How shall we get the Ger-
man armies out of France and Belgium as quickly as possible?
And so the first task of the heads of state in Paris for concluding
the World .War was to disarm the German armies and if possible
drive them back to Germany at once; and only after that could
they devote themselves to the fulfillment of their real and original
war aim. In this respect, to be sure, France was already para-
lyzed. For England the War had really been victoriously con-
cluded with the annihilation of Germany as a colonial and com-
mercial power and her reduction to the rank of a second-class
state. Not only did the English possess no interest in the total
extermination of the German state; they even had every reason
to desire a rival against France in Europe for the future. Hence
the French political leaders had to continue with determined
peacetime labor what the War had begun, and Clemenceau’s
utterance, that for him the peace was only the continuation of
the War, took on an increased significance.

Persistently, on every conceivable occasion, they had’to shatter
the structure of the Reich. By the imposition of one disarma-
ment note after another, on the one hand, and by the economic
extortion thus made possible, on the other hand, Paris* hoped
slowly to disjoint the Reich structure. The more rapidly national
honor withered away in Germany, the sooner could economic pres-
sure and unending poverty lead to destructive political effects.
Such a policy of political repression and economic plunder, car-
ried on for ten or twenty years, must gradually ruin even the best
state structure and under certain circumstances dissolve it.
And thereby the French war aim would finally be achieved.

By the winter of 1922-23 this must long since have been recog-
nized as the French intent. Only two possibilities remained;
We might hope gradually to blunt the French will against the
tenacity of the German nation, or at long last to do what would
have to be done in the end anyway, to pull the helm of the Reich
ship about on s8me particularly crass occasion, and ram the

674

Mein Kampf

enemy. This, to be sure, meant a lifc-and-death struggle, and
there existed a prospect of life only if previously we succeeded in
isolating France to such a degree that this second war would not
again constitute a struggle of Germany against the world, but
a defense of Germany against a France which was constantly dis-
turbing the world and its peace.

I emphasize the fact, and I am firmly convinced of it, that this
second eventuality must and will some day occur, whatever hap-
pens. I never believe that France’s intentions toward us could
ever change, for in the last analysis they are merely in line with
the self-preservation of the French nation, it I were a French-
man, and if the greatness of France were as dear to me as that of
Germany is sacred, I could not and would not act any differently
from Clemenceau. The French nation, slowly dying out, not only
with regard to population, but particularly with regard to its
best racial elements, can in the long run retain its position in the
world only if Germany is shattered. French policy may pursue
a thousand d6tours; somewhere in the end there will be this goal,
the fulfillment of ultimate desires and deepest longing. And it is
false to believe that a purely passive wiU, desiring only to pre-
serve itself, can for any length of time resist a will that is no less
powerful, but proceeds actively. As long as the eternal conflict be-
tween Germany and France is carried on only in the form of a Ger-
man defense against French aggression, it will never be decided, but
from year to year, from century to century, Gertnany will lose one
position after another. Follow the movements of the German lan-
guage frontier beginning with the twelfth century until today,
and you will hardly be able to count on the success of an attitude
and a development which has done us so much damage up till
now.

Only when this is fully understood in Germany, so that the
vital will of the German nation is no longer allowed to languish
in purely passive defense, but is pulled together for a final active
reckoning with France and thrown into a last decisive struggle
with the greatest ultimate aims on l^e German side — only tiien
.will we be able to end the eternal and esseiftially so fruitless

Occupation or the Ruhr

675

struggle between ourselves and France; presupposing, of course,
that Germany actually regards the destruction of France as
only a means which will afterward enable her finally to give our
people the expansion made possible elsewhere. Today we count
eighty million Germans in Europe! This foreign policy will be
acknowledged as correct only if, after scarcely a hundred years,
there are two hundred and fifty million Germans on this con-
tinent, and not living penned in as factory coolifes for the rest of
the world, but: as peasants and workers, who guarantee each
other’s livelihood ty their labor.

In December, 1922, the situation between Germany and France
again seemed menacingly exacerbated. France was contemplat-
ing immense new extortions, and needed pledges for them.
The economic pillage had to be preceded by a political pressure
and it seemed to the French that only a violent blow at the nerve
center of our entire German life would enable them to subject
our ‘recalcitrant’ people to a sharper yoke. With the occupation
of the Ruhr, the French hoped not only to break the moral back-
bone of Germany once and for all, but to put us into an embar-
rassing economic situation in which, whether we liked it or not,
we would have to assume every obligation, even the heaviest.

It was a question of bending and breaking. Germany bent at
the very outset, and ended up by breaking completely later.

With the occupation of the Ruhr, Fate once again held out a
hand to help the German people rise again. For what at the first
moment could not but seem a great misfortune embraced on
closer inspection an infinitely pr«mising opportunity to terminate
all German misery.

From the standpoint of foreign relations, the occupation of the
Ruhr for the first time reaUy alienated England basically from
France, and not only in the circles of British diplomacy which had
concluded, examined, and maintained the French alliance as
such only with the sober eye of cold calculators, but also in the
broadest circles of the English people. The English economy in
particular viewed^with ill-concealed displeasure this new and in-
credible strengthening of French continental power. For not.

676

Mein Kampf

only that France, from the purely politico-military point of view,
now assumed a position in Europe such as previously not even
Germany had possessed, but, economically as well, she now ob-
tained economic foundations which almost combined a position
of economic monopoly with her capacity for political competition.
The largest iron mines and coal fields in Europe were thus united
in the hands of a nation which, in sharp contrast to Germany,
had always defended its vital interests with equal determination
and activism, and which in the Great War had freshly reminded
the whole world of its military reliability. With the occupation
of the Ruhr coal fields by France, England’s entire gain through
the War was wrested from her hands, and the victor was no longer
British diplomacy so industrious and alert, but Marshal Foch and
the France he represented.

In Italy, too, the mood against France, which, since the end of
the War, had been by no means rosy to begin with, shifted to a
veritable hatred. It was the great, historical moment in which
the allies of former days could become the enemies of tomorrow.
If things turned out differently and the allies did not, as in the
second Balkan War, suddenly break into a sudden feud among
themselves, this was attributable only to the circumstance that
Germany simply had no Enver Pasha, but a Reich Chancellor
Cuno.

Yet not only from the standpoint of foreign policy, but of do-
mestic policy as well, the French assault on the Ruhr held great
future potentialities for Germany. A considerable part of our
people which, thanks to the inceSsant influence of our Ijnng press,
still regarded France as the champion of progress and liberalism,
was abruptly cured of this lunatic delusion. Just as the year 1914
had dispelled the dreams of international solidarity between peo-
ples from the heads of our German workers and led them suddenly
back into the world of eternal struggle, throughout which one
being feeds on another and the death of the weaker means the
life of the stronger, the spring of 1923 did likewise.

When the Frenchman carried tmt his t^ats and finally ,
» though at first cautiously and hesitantly, began to move into the

Possibilities After Occupation of the Ruhr? 677

lower German coal district, a great decisive hour of destiny had
struck for Germany. If in this moment our people combined a
change of heart with a shift in their previous attitude, the Ruhr
could become a Napoleonic Moscow for France. There were
only two possibilities:. Either we stood for this new oj’ense and did
nothing, or, directing the eyes of the German people to this land of
glowing smelters and smoky furnaces, we inspired them with a glow-
ing will to end this eternal disgrace and rather take'upon themselves
the terrors of the moment than hear an endless terror one tnoment
longer.

To have discovered a third way was the immortal distinction
of Reich Chancellor Cuno, to have admired it and gone along,
the still more glorious distinction of our German bourgeois
parties.

Here I shall first examine the second course as briefly as pos-
sible.

With the occupation of the Ruhr, France had accomplished a
conspicuous breach of the Versailles Treaty. In so doing, she had
also put herself in conflict with a number of signatory powers, and
especially with England and Italy. France could no longer hope
for any support on the part of these states for her own selfish
campaign of plunder. She herself, therefore, had to bring the ad-
venture — and that is what it was at first — to some happy
conclusion. For a national German government there could be
but a single course, that which honor prescribed. It was certain
that for the present France could not be opposed by active force
of arms; but we had to realize clearly that any negotiations, unless
backed by power, would be absurd and fruitless. Without the
possibility of active resistance, it was absurd to adopt the stand-
point: ‘We shall enter into no negotiations ’ ; but it was even more
senseless to end by entering into negotiations after all, without
having meanwhile equipped ourselves with power.

Not that we could have prevented the occupation of the Ruhr
by military measures. Only a madman could have advised such a
decision. But utilj^ng the imprestion made by this French action
and while it was being carried out, what we absolutely should ,

678

Mein Kampf

have done was, without regard for the Treaty of Versailles which
France herself had torn up, to secure the military resources with
which we cpuld later have equipped our negotiators. For it was
dear from the start that one day the question of this territory
occupied by France would be settled at some conference' table.
But we had to be equally clear on the fact that even the best
negotiators can achieve little success, as long as the ground on
which they stand and the chair on which they sit is not the shield
arm of their nation. A feeble little tailor cannot argue with ath-
letes, and a defenseless negotiator has always -suffered the sword
of Brennus on the opposing side of the scale, unless he had his
o'wn to throw in as a counterweight. Or has it not been miserable
to watch the comic-opera negotiations which since 1918 have al-
ways preceded the repeated dictates? This degrading spectade
presented to the whole world, first in-viting us to the conference
table, as though in mockery, then presenting us with decisions and
programs prepared long before, which, to be sure, could be dis-
cussed, but which from the start could only be regarded as un-
alterable. It is true that our negotiators, in hardly a single case,
rose above the most humble average, and for the most part
justified only too well the insolent utterance of Lloyd George, who
contemptuously remarked, d propos of former Reich Minister
Simon, ‘ that the Germans didn’t know how to choose men of in-
telligence as their leaders and representatives.’ But even gen-
iuses, in -view of the enemy’s determined will to power and the
miserable defenselessness of our own people in every respect,
would have achieved but little. ”

But anyone who in the spring of 1923 wanted to make France’s
occupation of the Ruhr an occasion for reviving our military im-
plements of power had first to give the nation its spiritual weap-
ons, strengthen its will power, and destroy the corrupters of this
most precious national strength.

Just as in 1918 we paid with our blood for the fact that in 1914
and 1915 we did not proceed to trample the head of the Marxist
serpent once and for all, we would laave to pay most catastrophi-
cally if in the spring of 1923 we did not ^vail ourselves of the op-

Failure to Settle Accounts with Marxism 679

portunity to halt the activity of the Marxist traitors and murder-
ers of the nation for good.

Any idea of real resistance to France was utter nonsense if we
did not declare war against those forces which five years before
had btoken German. resistance on the battlefields from within.
Only bourgeois minds can arrive at the incredible opinion that
Marxism might now have changed, and that the scoundrelly lead-
ers of 1918, who then coldly trampled two million dead underfoot,
the better to climb into the various seats of government, now in
1923 were suddenly ready to render their tribute to the national
conscience. An incredible and really insane idea, the hope that
the traitors of former days would suddenly turn into fighters for
a German freedom. It never entered their heads. No more than
a hyena abandons carrion does a Marxist abandon treason. And
don’t annoy me, if you please, with the stupidest of all arguments,
that, after all, so many workers bled for Germany. German
workers, yes, but then they were no longer international Marxists.
If in 1914 the German working class in their innermost convictions
had still consisted of Marxists, the War would have been over in
three weeks. Germany would have collapsed even before the first
soldier set foot across the border. No, the fact that the German
people was then stiU fighting proved that the Marxist delusion had
not yet been able to gnaw its way into the bottommost depths.
But in exact proportion as, in the course of the War, the German
worker and the German soldier fell back into the hands of the
Marxist leaders, in exactly that proportion he was lost to the
fatherland. If at the beginning bf the War and during the War
twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the peo-
ple had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of
thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the
sacrifice of miUions at the front would not have been in vain.
On the contrary: twelve thousand scoundrels eliminated in time
might have saved the lives of a million real Germans, valuable for
the future. But it just happened to be in the line of bourgeois
‘ stat esmanshi p ’ tOjSubject millions to a bloody end on the battle-
field without batting an^ eyelash, but to regard ten or twelve •

680

Mein Kampe

thousand traitors, profiteers, usurers, and swindlers as a sacred
national treasure and openly proclaim their inviolability. We
never know which is greater in this bourgeois world, the im-
becility, weakness, and cowardice, or their deep-dyed corruption.
It is truly a class doomed by Fate, but unfortunately, however, it
is dragging a whole nation with it into the abyss.

And in 1923 we faced exactly the^ same situation as in 1918.
Regardless what type of resistance was decided on, the' first re-
quirement was always the elimination of the Marxist poison from
our national body. And in my opinion, it was* then the very first
task of a truly national government to seek and find the forces
which were resolved to declare a war of annihilation on Marxism,
and then to give these forces a free road; it was their duty not to
worship the idiocy of ‘law and order’ at a moment when the
enemy without was administering the most annihilating blow to
the fatherland and at home treason lurked on eveiy street comer.
No, at that time a really national government should have de-
sired disorder and imrest, provided only that amid the confusion
a basic reckoning with Marxism at last became possible and
actually took place. If this were not done, any thought of re-
sistance, regardless of what type, was pure madness.

Such a reckoning of real world-historical import, it must be
admitted, does not follow the schedules of a privy coimcilor or
some dried-up old minister, but the eternal laws of life on this
earth, which are the struggle for this life and which remain stmg-
gle. It should have been borne in mind that the bloodiest civil
wars have often given rise to a Iteeled and healthy people, while
artificially cultivated states of peace have more than once pro-
duced a rottenness that stank to high Heaven. You do not alter
the destinies of nations in kid gloves. And so, in the year 1923,
the most bmtal thrust was required to seize the vipers that were
devouring our people. Only if this were successful did the prepa-
ration of active resistance have meaning.

At that time I often talked my throat hoarse, attempting to
make it clear, at least to the so-cafied national circles, what was
' now at stake, aqd that, if we made the, same blunders as in 1914

Failure to Settle Accounts with Marxism 681

and the years that followed, the end would inevitably be the samf>
as in 1918. Again and again, I begged them to give free rein to
Fate, and to give our movement an opportunity for a reckoning
with Marxism ; but I preached to deaf ears. They all knew better,
including the chief .of the armed forces, until at length they faced
the most wretched capitulation of all time.

Then I realized in my innermost soul that the German bour-
geoisie Was at the end of its’m'ission and is destined for no further
mission. Then I saw how all these parties continued to bicker
with the Marxists only out of asmpetitors’ eqvy, without any
serious desire to annihilate them; at heart they had all of tVipm
long since reconciled themselves to the destruction of the father-
land, and what moved them was only grave concern that they
themselves should be able to partake in the funeral feast. That
is all they were stiU ‘fighting’ for.

In this period — I openly admit — I conceived the profoundest
admiration for the great man south of the Alps, who, full of ar-
dent love for his people, made no pacts with the enemies of Italy,
but strove for their annihilation by all ways and means. What
will rank Mussolini among the great men of this earth is his de-
termination not to share Italy with the Marxists, but to destroy
internationalism and save the fatherland from it. * ,

How miserable and dwarfish our German would-be statesmen
seem by comparison, and how one gags with disgust when these
nonentities, with boorish arrogance, dare to criticize this man who
is a thousand times greater than they; and how painful it is to
think that this is happening in a'land which barely half a century
ago could call a Bismarck its leader.

In view of this attitude on the part of the bourgeoisie and the
policy of leaving the Marxists untouched, the fate of any active
resistance in 1923 was decided in advance. To fight France with
the deadly enemy in our own ranks would have been sheer idiocy.
What was done after that could at most be shadow-boxing, staged
to satisfy the nationalistic element in Germany in some measure,
or in reality to duije the ‘seething soul of the people.’ If they had
seriously believed in what they were doing, they would have had ,

682

Mein Kampf

to recognize that the strength of a nation lies primarily, not in
its weapons, but in its will, and that, before foreign enemies are
conquered^ the enemy within must be annihilated; otherwise God
help us if victory does not reward our arms on the very first day.
Once so much as the shadow of a defeat grazes a people that is not
free of internal enemies, its force of resistance will break and the
foe will be the final victor.

This could be predicted as early as February, 1923. Let no one
mention the questionableness of a military success against France |
For if the result ef the German action in the face of the invasion
of the Ruhr had only been the destruction of Marxism at home,
by that fact alone success would have been on our side. A Ger-
many saved from these mortal enemies of her existence and her
future would possess forces which the whole world could no
longer have stifled. On the day when Marxism is smashed in Ger-
many, her fetters will in truth be broken forever. For never in our
history have we been defeated by the strength of our foes, but
always by our own vices and by the enemies in our own camp.

Since the leaders of the German state could not summon up the
courage for such a heroic deed, logically they could only have
chosen the first course, that of doing nothing at all and letting
things "slide.

But in the great hour Heaven sent the German people a great
man, Herr von Cuno. He was not really a statesman or a poli-
tician by profession, and of course stfll less by birth; he was a
kind of political hack, who was needed only for the performance
of certain definite jobs; otherwise he was really more adept at
business. A curse for Germany, because this businessman in
politics regarded politics as an economic enterprise and acted ac-
cordingly.

‘France has occupied the Ruhr; what is in the Ruhr? Coal.
Therefore, France has occupied the Ruhr on account of the coal.’
What was more natural for Herr Cuno than the idea of striking in
order that the French should get no coal, whereupon, in the opin-
ion of Herr Cuno, they would one d^ evacuat^the Ruhr when the
' enterprise proved unprofitable. Suchj more or less, was this

CtTNo’s Way

683

‘eminent’ ‘national’ ‘statesman,’ who in Stuttgart and elsewhere
was allowed to address his people, and whom the people gaped at
in blissful admiration.

But for a strike, of course, the Marxists were needed, 'for it was
primarily the workers who would have to strike. Therefore, it
was necessary to bring the worker (and in the brain of one of these
bourgeois statesman he is always synonymous with the Marxist)
into a united front with all the other Germans. The way these
moldy political party cheeses glowed at the sound of such a bril-
liant slogan was something to behold! Not only a product of
genius, it was national at the same time — there at last they had
what at heart they had been seeking the whole while. The bridge
to Marxism had been found, and the national swindler was en-
abled to put on a Teutonic face and mouth German phrases while
holding out a friendly hand to the international traitor. And the
traitor seized it with the utmost alacrity. For just as Cuno
- needed the Marxist leaders for his ‘united front,' the Marxist
leaders were just as urgently in need of Cuno’s money. So it was
a help to both parties. Cuno obtained his united front, formed of
national windbags and anti-national scoundrels, and the inter-
national swindlers received state funds to carry out the supreme
mission of their struggle — that is, to destroy the national econ-
omy, and this time actually at the expense of the state. An
immortal idea, to save the nation by buying a general strike; in
any case a slogan in which even the most indifferent good-for-
nothing could join with full enthusiasm.

It is generally known that a naHon cannot be made free by prayers.
But maybe one could be made free by sitting with folded arms, and
that had to be historically tested. If at that time Herr Cuno, instead
of proclaiming his subsidized general strike and setting it up as the
foundation of the ‘united front,’ had only demanded two more hours
of work from eoery German, the ‘united front’ swindle would hem
shown itself up on the third day. Peoples are not freed by doing
nothing, but by sacrifices.

To be sure, thi^ so-called^assive resistance as such could not
be maintained for long. ^For only a man totally ignorant o? war- |

684

Mein Kampf

fare could imagine that occupying annies can be frightened away
by such ridiculous means. And that alone could have been the
ppngp of an action the costs of which ran into billions and which
materially helped to shatter the national currency to its very
foundations. . • ■

Of course, the French could make themselves at home in the
Ruhr with a certain sense of inner relief as soon as they saw the
resisters employing such methods. They had in fact obtained
from us the best directions for bringing a recalcitrant civilian
population to reason when its conduct represents a serious men-
ace to the occupation authorities. With what lightning speed,
after all, we had routed the Belgian /mMc-foVcMf bands nine years
previous and made the seriousness of the situation clear to the
civilian population when the German armies ran the risk of in-
curring serious damage from their activity. As soon as the passive
resistance in the Ruhr had grown really dangerous to the French,
it would have been child’s play for the troops of occupation to put
a cruel end to the whole childish mischief in less than a week. For
the ultimate question is always this: What do we do if the passive
resistance ends by really getting on an adversary’s nerves and he
takes up the struggle against it with brutal strong-arm methods?
Are we then resolved to offer further resistance? If so, we must
for better or worse invite the gravest, bloodiest persecutions.
But then we stand exactly where active resistance would put us
— face to face with struggle. Hence any so-called passive re-
sistance has an inner meaning only if it is backed by determina-
tion to continue it if necessary in open struggle or in undercover
guerrilla warfare. In general, any such struggle will depend on a
conviction that success is possible. As soon as a besieged fortress
under heavy attack by the enemy is forced to abandon the last
hope of relief, for aU practical purposes it gives up the fight, es-
pecially when in such a case the defender is lured by the cer-
tainty of life rather than probable death. Rob the garrison of a
surrounded fortress of faith in a possible liberation, and aU the
forces of defense will abruptly collipse.

Therefore, a p^sive resistance in thq,Ruhr, in view of the ulti-

Position of the National Socialists 685

mate consequences it could and inevitably would produce in case
it were actually successful, only had meaning if an active front
were built up behind it. Then, it is true, there is no limit to what
could have been drawn from our people. If every one of these
Westphalians had known that the homeland was setting up an
army of eighty or a htuidred divisions, the Frenchmen would have
found it thorny going. There are always more courageous men
willing to sacrifice themselves for success than for something
that is obviously futile.

It was a classical case which forced us National Socialists to
take the sharpest position against a so-called national slogan.
And so we did. In these months I was attacked no little by men
whose whole national attitude was nothing but a mixture of
stupidity and outward sham, all of whom joined in the shouting
only because they were unable to resist the agreeable thrill of sud-
denly being able to put on national airs without any danger. I
regarded this most lamentable of all united fronts as a most
ridiculous phenomenon, and history has proved me right.

As soon as the unions had filled their treasuries with Cuno’s
funds, and the passive resistance was faced with the decision of
passing from defense with folded arms to active attack, the Red
hyenas immediately bolted from the national sheep herd and be-
came again what they had alwajrs been. Quietly and ingloriously
Herr Cuno retreated to his sMps, and Germany was richer by one
experience and poorer by one great hope.

Dovm to late midsummer many officers, and they were as-
suredly not the worst, had at heart not believed in such a dis-
graceful development. They had all hoped that, if not openly,
in secret at least, preparations had been undertaken to make this
insolent French assault a turning point in German history. Even
in our ranks there were many who put their confidence at least
in the Reichswehr. And this conviction was so alive that it de-
cisively determined the actions and particularly the training of
innumerable young people.

But when the disgracefu]«collapse occurred and the crushing,

disgraceful capitulation followed, the sacrifice of billions of hoarks j

* • *1

686

Mein Kampe

and thousands of young Germans — who had been stupid enough
to take the promises of the Reich’s leaders seriously — indigna-
tion flared into a blaze against such a betrayal of our unfortunate
people. In millions of minds the conviction suddenly arose bright
and dear that only a radical elimination of .the whole ruling sys-
tem could save Germany.

Never was the time riper, never did it cry out more imperiously
for such a solution than in the moment when, on the one hand,
naked treason shamelessly revealed itself, while, on the other
hand, a people ^as economically delivered to slow starvation.
Since the state itself trampled all laws of loyalty and faith under-
foot, mocked the rights of its dtizens, cheated millions of its
truest sons of their sacriflces and robbed millions of others of their
last penny, it had no further right to expect anything but hatred
of its subjects. And in any event, this hatred against the spoilers
of people and fatherland was pressing toward an explosion. In
this place I can only point to the final sentence of my last speech
in the great trial of spring, 1924:

‘The judges of this state may go right ahead and convict us for
our actions at that time, but History, acting as the goddess of a
higher truth and a higher justice, will one day smilingly tear up
this vefdict, acquitting us of all guilt and blame.’

And then she will call all those before her judgment seat, who
today, in possession of power, trample justice and law underfoot,
who have led our people into misery and ruin and amid the mis-
fortune of the fatherland have valued their own ego above the
life of the community. «•

In this place I shall not continue with an accoimt of those
'I events which led to and brought about the 8th of November,
1923. I shall not do so because in so doing I see no promise for
the future, and because above all it is useless to reopen wounds
that seem scarcely healed; moreover, because it is useless to speak
of guilt regarding men who in the bottom of their hearts, per^ps,
were all devoted to their nation with equal love, and who only
missed or failed to understand the oommon ro^.

, In view of the great common misfortune of our fatherland, I

Our Dead Admonish Us to Duty

687

today no longer wish to wound and thus perhaps alienate those
who one day in the future will have to form the great united
front of those who are really true Germans at heart against the
common front of the enemies of our people. For I know that some
day the time will come when even those who then faced us with
hostility, will think with veneration of those who traveled the
bitter road of desj,th for their German people.

I wish at the end of the setond volume to remind the supporters
and champions of our doctrine of those eighteen ’ heroes, to whom
I have dedicated the first volume of my work, those heroes who
sacrificed themselves for us all with the clearest consciousness.
They must forever recall the wavering and the weak to the ful-
fillment of his duty, a duty which they themselves in the best
faith carried to its final consequence. And among them I want
also to count that man, one of the best, who devoted his life to
the awakening of his, our people, in his writings and his thoughts
and finally in his deeds:

Dietrich Echart *

‘ Second edition reduces the number of heroes to sixteen. These are the
men who fell in the Munich Beer Hall FiUsch on November 11, 1923.

* Dietrich Eckart was the spiritual founder of the National Socialist Party.
He was the type of homespun political philosopher often found m tb? Schwa-
bing quarter of Munich. He was an habitue of the Brennessel Cabaret,
where Heiden quotes him as saying in 1919: ‘We need a fellow at the head
who can stand the sound of a machine gun. The rabble need to get fear into
their pants. We can’t use an officer, because the people don’t respect them

any more. The best would be a worker who knows how to talk He

doesn’t need much brains, politics is the stupidest business in the world, and
every marketwoman in Munich knows more than the people in Weimar. I’d
rather have a vain monkey who can give the Reds a juicy answer, and
doesn’t run away when people begin swinging table legs, than a dozen learned
professors. He must be a bachelor, then we’ll get the women.’

Eckart died from overdrinking in 1923.

Conclusion

On November 9, 1923, iq the fourth year'
of its existence^i the National Socialist German Workers’ Party
was dissolved and prohibited in the whole Reich territory. Today
in November, 1926, it stands again free before us, stronger and
inwardly firmer than ever before.

All the persecutions of the movement and its individual leaders,
all -^lifications and slanders, were powerless to harm it. The cor-
rectness of its ideas, the purity of its will, its supporters’ spirit of
self-sacrifice, have caused it to issue from all repressions stronger
than ever.

If, in the world of our present parliamentary corruption, it be-
comes more and more aware of the profoundest essence of its
struggle, feels itself to be the purest embodiment of the value of
race and personality and conducts itself accordingly, it will with
almost mathematical certainty some day emerge victorious from
its struggle. Just as Germany must inevitably win her rightful
position on this earth if she is led and organized according to the
same principles.

A state which in this age of racial poisoning dedicates itself to
the care of its best racial elements must some day become lord of
the earth.

May the adherents of our movement never forget this if ever
the magnitude of the sacrifices should beguile them to an anxious
I comparison with the possible results.

Index

Academy ai Art, 18-20
Adler (Viktor), 61
Africa, 267, 617
African state, 644

Alliance policy, German, 127, 128, 130,
154, 155, 209, 271, 607, 611, 612, 618,
621, 622, 633-635, 643, 657, 664-666
Alsace-Lorraine, 271, 636, 672
‘Altes Rosenbad,’ 221
Amann, Max, 592, 593
America, 25, 26, 139, 182, 286, 439, 440,
566, 567, 614, 615, 637, 638, 644
Anglo-Saxon, 139
Anschluss, 38

Anti-Semitism, 52, 54-56, 64, 119-122,
560, 561

Arbeiter-Zeilung, 38, 41
Architecture, 17, 19, 20, 34, 35, 70, 123
School of, 20

Army, the German, 279-281, 577
Art, 17-20, 34, 70, 126, 258-263, 265,
266, 279

Articles of War, the, 521, 525
Aryan, 150, 290, 291, 294-300, 304, 308,
309, 383, 391, 393, 427, 447, 497, 561,
562, 640, 648

Aryan State (or nation), 153, 452
Asia, 267 '

Auer (Erhard), 502
Austerlitz (Joseph), 61
Austria, 3-5, 10-13, 15, 16, 24, 30, 37,
38, 53, 68-71, 74-79, 83, 93-95, 97,
98, 101, 102, 108, 109, 116, 117, 119-
124, 127, 129, 130, 141-143, 145-148,
158-163, 181, 219, 387-390, 493, 511,
512, 656, 657

as an ally of Germany, 146-148
Austrian Empire {see Austria)
‘Away-from-Rome’ movement, 11^ 116

Balkan War, 158
Bastardization, 400-403, 562, 644
Battle of Kations, the, 481
Bauer, Professor, 362
Bavaria, 189, 190, 194, 203. 214, 219,
367, 368, 554-560, 569, 573. 576, 577,
590, 647

Bavarian Diet, the, 502, 557
Bavarian People’s Party, 366, 387, 480,
574, 594

Bavarian Regiment, 163
Bavarian Republic of Councils, 258,
557

Bayreuth, 474
Belgium, 673
Berliner Tageblatt, 255
Bethmann-HoUweg, 275, 476, 477
Birth-control, 131, 132, 134, 137, 255,
256 402 403

Bism^, 7, 127, 145, 144 155, 162, 172,
234, 269, 333, 559, 564, 567v569, 655,
656, 681

Bismarckian state, 226, 559, 569
Biicklin, 262
Boer War, the, 158
Bolshevism {see Marxism)

Bolshevist Revolution, the, 475
Bonapartists, 619
Bourbons, 619
Braunau on the Inn, 3
Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of, 358, 464, 467-
469

British Empire, 75
Bundesrat, 567

Cameroons, 138
Carthage, fall of, 668
Catholicism, 93, lOO, 108-110, 113-117,
119, 432, 459, 475, 561, 562, 563
Center, the, 160, 217, 218, :71, 366, 493,
564

Balkanization, 617

690

Index

Centralization, 565, 569
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, 269
Chinese, 388

Christian Social Party, 55, 97, 98, 119-
122,176,268,493
Churches, 403

Cities, cWacter of German, 263-266,
317

Citizenship, 438-441
Classes, social, 22-24, 42, 44, 49
Clausewitz, Ehrl, von, 668, 670
Clemenceau, 673
Clerical republicans, 619
Clericals, 493
Clothing, 412 ,

Colonies, 138-140
Colonization, German:
internal, 133-138
external, 139, 142, 644
European, 139
Combat leagues, 532-541
Commerce, Gennan international, 142,
149

Communism {see Marrism)

Cuno, Herr, Reich Chanc^or, 603, 676,
677, 682, 683, 685
Czechization (ree Slavization)

4 .

Danton, 544

Danubian Monarchy {see Austria)

David, 61

Dawes Flan, 670

Democrats, 480

Deutsches VolksblaU, 54, 55

‘Deutschland ilber Alles,’ 13, 163, 165, 199

Deutscheilldsche Partei, 360

Dorten case, 559

Drezler (Anton), 221, 356, 365

Ebert, Friedrich, 199, 260, 544
Eckart, Dietrich, 687
Education, 236, 237, 253, 254, 337, 407-
433,442

Edward VH (King of England), 148, 666
Egypt, 239, 656, 658
Eisner, Kurt, 207, 215, 556, 557
Elizabeth, Queen, 613
Ellenbogen, 61

Employers, 597, 599, 601, 602
England, 139, 144, 145, 152, 157, 181,
183, 554, 615, 619, 624, 635-638, 640,
651, &7, 659, 673, 677

as an ally of Germany, 140, 141, 143,
613-616, 618, 620, 625, 636, 638, 664,
665

Entente, 195, 217, 228, 665, 666
Enver, Pasha, 676
Erzberger, Mattias, 544
Esser, Hermann, 506

Feder, Gottfried, 209, 210, 213, 215, 217,
219, 221

Federalism, 555, 559, 560, 562, 565, 566,
568, 573, 575, 578
Festsaal {see Hofbrkuhaus)

Flanders, 164, 205

‘Folkish,’ 362, 363, 378-385, 448, 452,
453, 458, 460-462
Folkish Leagues, 498
Ford, Henry, 639

Foreign policy, German, 141, 143, 155,
271, 608-622, 625-637, 641-667
‘Foreigners,’ 4^, 441
France, 31, 54, 59, 188, 236, 553, 554,
563, 616, 617-620, 622-625, 644, 651,
654, 660, 665, 666, 672-679, 681, 682,
684, 685

Francis Ferdinand, Archduke, 15, 92, 158
Francis Joseph (Emperor of Austria), 159
Franco-German War, 6, 11
Franconia, 559

Frankfurter Zeitung, 244, 245, 307
Frederick the Great, 111, 213, 238, 260,
311, 612

Freemasonry, 315, 320
French Revolution, 475, 533
Frick, Wilhelm, Chief Deputy, 367, 368
Fiiss (National Socialist goldsmith), 496

Gahr (National Socialist goldsmith), 496
LGenius, 293, 294, 342, 346, 449, 543, 544
‘German Day,' 548-551
German Nationalists, 480
German National People’s Party, 366
German People’s Party, 480
German Republic, 439, 494, 522, 523,
526, 528, 529, 536, 542, 549, 558, 570,
571, 573, 671

German Revolution {see Revolution)
German-Socialist Party, 514
German state policy, 143
German Union, the, 226
Ger&anization, 3(^90
Germans abroad, 11, 571

Index

691

Goethe, 58, 259, 512
Goyim, 325

Gr^ks, andent, 393, 408, 423
Gymhasium, 7, 253, 418

Habsburg, house of, 13, 15, 16, 24, 37,
68, 73, 76, 79, 93-95, 97, 108, 121, 129,
130, 141, 146, 147-149, -160-163, 390,
511, 512, 613, 628
Hamburg, 68

Hansen, Theophil von, 20 ,

Hairei (iCail), 221, 355, 356, 365
‘Hefl!’ 163
Hess (Rudolf), 506
Himalaya, 392 >

Hofbr&uhaus, 369, 371
Hofburg, 53, 130, 159
HohenzoUem, 204, 511, 512, 647
Humamtarianism, 178
Hungary (see Nationalities)

Independent Party, 527, 549, SS7
India, 656-658
Insignia, party, i92-491
Intellectuals (see Intelligentsia)
Intelligenttia, 224, 227, 245, 253, 262,
331, 335, 339-343, 368, 410, 431-433,
469, 476, 524, 654

‘Interest slavery,’ btealdng of, 213, 214
Inventions, man’s, 444-446
Italy, 130, 146-148, 188, 194, 562, 617,
624, 636, 637, 656, 665, 677, 681
as an ally, 620, 625, 628, 664

Jacobins, 619

Japan, 141, 158, 274, 290, 291, 637-640
Jews:

aesthetics, 178

and syphilis, 253 j

appearance of, 56, 57-
as a race, 232, 287, 300-308, 312,
313, 447

as liberals, 93, 120, 314
as Marrists, 63, 125, 155, 231,

31‘W21, 324, 382, 447, 457, 472
as merchants, 308, 309
as revolutionists, 194, 203, 207, 326
as Sodal Democrats, 60-64, 527
as usurers, 309-311
as world financiers, 148, 243, 314,
453, 600, 622, (S3, 624, 639 *
general, 21, 51, 52, 91, 113, 120-123,

125, 136, 147, 157, 168, 169, 174,
193, 206, 235, 265, 281, 318, 321,
324, 327, 329, 332, 334, 339, 352,
353, 361, 368, 377, 412, 427, 430,
447, 452, 454, 465, 472, 473, 493,
523, 524, 526, 532, '533, 555, 556,
557, 560-562, 564, 565, 600, 623,
624, 626, 630, 637-640, 655, 661,
662, 669, 670, 672, 679
intellectuals, 457
in the state, 150, 153
Jewification, lil, 308, 318
nomadism, 304, 305
parasites, ISO

press, 57, 58, 61, 81, 86, 173, 228,
243-246, 272, 306, 308, 315, 316,
320, 323, 324, 351, 352, 376, 486,
533, 538, 625, 638
relation to art, 326
relation to foreign trade, 70
relation to morals and prostitution,
59

relation to the State, 453
relation to trade-unions, 321-323
religion. 111

Joseph n, 71, 73, 74, 389

Kmser, the (see William nX
KopiM (see Marx, Karl)

Koniggratz, 94, 512

Kyfihguserbund der deutschen Landes-
kiieger verbande (see Veterajis' clubs)

Lambach, 5, 6
Land, 138, 142

Law for the Protection of the Republic,
547

Leadership, 349

League of Nations, 243, 627, 657
League of Oppressed Nations, 656, 657
Leiber Room (see StemeckerbrSu)
Leipzig, 576
Lenin, 475
Leopoldstadt, 59
Linz, 4, 14, 52, 56
Lloyd George (David), 476-478
Locarno, Treaty of, 670
London Conference, 498
‘Los-von-Rom’ Bewqgung (see *Away-
from-Rome’ Movement)

Ludendorff (Erich von), 146, 231, 275
Ludwig I, King, 2<S4, 576

692

Index

Ludwig in, King, 163

Lueg.r, Dr. Karl, SS, 69, 98-101, 121, 176

Luther, Martin, 213

Man, development of, 444-447
Manchester (Manchesterism), 93, 120
Marat, 544
Maria Theresa, 160
Marriage, 251-254
Marx, Karl, 215, 382, 391, 472, 475
Marxism, 21, 37, 38,51, 61, 63-65, 78,
125, 147, 154-156, 167, 168, 172-174,
176, 195, 206, 217, 218, 220, 235, 243,
244, 253, 258, 262, 268, 272, 319, 320,
329, 334, 335, 342, 348, 357, 365, 366,
368, 369, 373, 376, 382-384, 391, 442,
448, 449, 453, 457, 464, 472, 477, 479,
483, 486, 488-490, 492-494, 497-500,
522, 523, 527, 528, 531-535, 543, 547-
553, 557, 558, 564, 565, 600, 603-605,
621-623, 637, 639, 654, 661, 662, 678-
683

Marxist (see Marxism)

Mass meeting, the, general remarks,
478-480

Maurice, Emil, 506

Max (Maximiliian), Emperor of Mexico,
94

Mice, Hitler's reflections on, 219, 220
Middle class, German, 519, 520
Militarism, 22^230
Military service, 413, 414
Mohammedan, 267
Moltke, 178, 408
Monarchism, 277, 279, 362, 568
Monarchists, 237-239
Milnchener Beobackter, 355
Mflnchener-Kindl-KeUer, the, 497, 498
Miinchener Post, 507
Munich, Hitler’s arrival in, 126, 127, 192,
194

general: 158, 162, 164, 203, 207, 208,
215, 257, 354, 355, 369, 463, 473,
481, 488, 491, 496-498, 501-503,
547, 551, 557-559, 572, 576, 577,
590, 627

Museum, Vienna, 19
Mussolini, 681

My Political Avmltening, pamphlet, 220

Napoleop (1), 614
INapoleon HI, 94

Napoleonic Wars, 572
NSDAP (see National Socialist German
Workers’ Party) . .

National Socialist German Workers’
Party, 155, 208, 214, 217, 219-224,
330-370, 373-378, 384, 385, 393, 394,
435, 436, 442, 443, 448, 449, 451, 458-
469, 473,-477^79, 483-507, 513-517,
530, 534, 536, 538, 532-545, 547-554,
558, 559, 561, 564, 565, 572-590, 592-
606, 608, 609, 630, 635, 640-646, 648,
649, 652, 654, 655, 656, 664, 666, 667,
685, 688

National Socialist Program: 373, 374;
458-460

National Socialist unions (see Trade
unions)

Nationalism, 6, 7, 10-17, 30, 31, 33, 34,
72, 73, 123, 124, 336-341 , 395-397, 425-
427, 574

Nationalities, 70, 71, 75, 92, 123, 280,
438

Naturalization, 438

Negroes, 70, 188, 325, 388, 395, 403, 430,
438, 624, 629
Netherlands, the, 614
Neue Preia Presse, 53
Newspapers (see Press)

Nibelungen Ideal, the, 128
North Africa (see Africa)

NorthcliSe (Lord), 638
North Sea, the, ^

November Revolution (see Revolution,
German)

Nuremberg, 514, 576, 577

Opera (see Theater)

Organization, party, S80-59S
©stmark, 11, 69, 94, 139, 647
Oxenstiema, Axel, 270

Pacifism, 288, 396

Palm, Johannes, bookseller of Nurem-
berg, 4

Pan-German Movement, 93, 95, 97-99,
101-109, 113, 114, 116-119, 122, 388
Parents (Hitler’s), 4^10, 17-21
Paris, 162, 188, 196, 225, 512
Paris Agreement, the, 497
Parliament:

Wtrian, 19,^5-79, 92, 97, 102
English, 76

Index

693

Parliamentarianism, 78-92, 103-107,
199, 240, 375-378, 447, 451, 587
Passau, 4

Patriotism, Gennan, 424-426
Peace treaties, German, 632
Peasantry, 138, 234
‘People’s army,’ 144
Pericles, age of, 262
Persian Wars, the, 612
Philosophy, 455-460 '

Physic^ training, 408-410, 428 ’ ■

Pied Piper of Hamelin, 149
Piihner, Ernst, 367, 368, 538
Poland, 636, 659
Politicians, 166
Fotsch, Dr. Leopold, 14
Press, the, 41, 42, 50, 52-54, 58, 61, 128,
144, 166, 187, 197, 242-246, 365, 465,
469-471, 473, 477, 485, 486, 488, 565
freedom of, 242

three kinds of newspaper readers,
240-242

Private property, 235
Propaganda, 145, 176-190, 193, 196, 198,
341-343, 464, 467, 476, 552, 554, 570,
579, 580-588, 632
Prostitution, 59, 251-257
of art, 238-260

'Protestantism, 112, 113, 561-564
Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion, 307
Prussia, 68, 152, 154, 189, 190, 193, 194,
204, 219, 511, 512, 554, 557-560, 566,
567, 647, 648

Prussian army, 449, 555, 556
Public opinion, 464^6
Punic Wars, 612

Quirinal, 130

Race, 119, 120, 122, 134, 135, 146, ISO,
214, 232, 247-249, 254, 285-293, 312,
324, 325, 327-329, 338, 339, 382-384,
389-409, 427, 428, 439, 442
Reading, art of, 35-37
RealschuU, 7, 9, 10, 14, 17-19, 51, 419
Reich, 3, 4, 11, 16, 5,3, 54, 94, 95, 98, 114,
123-125, 127, 129, 131, 137, 139-141,
146, 147, 154, 162, 163, 225, 226, 230,
231, 243, 257, 261, 265, 266, 269, 270-
272, 280-283, 327, 328, 353, 375,, 376,
387, 396, 398, 437, 441, 447, 449, 450,
488, 492-494, 497, 512, 518^ 519, 534,

545, 546, 553, SSS, 557, 559, 560-566,
568-572, 633, 636, 638, 644, 645^647,
649, 650, 659, 663, 664, 672, 673, 685,
686,688

Reickslanner rallies, 570 ■

Reichsrat, 61, 75, 76, 79
Reichstag, 54, 75, 169, 270-272, 275,
329, 595

Reichstag Building, 266
Rehgion, 267, 268, 379, 380, 454
Repington, Colonel, ^31
Revolution, German, the, 202, 203, 343,
518, 521-524, 526-529, 531, 542, 544,
556, 560, 605, 607, 608, 615, 629, 631
general: 261, 475, 503, 516, 517, 533,
583,584
Robespierre, 544
Roman Senate, 230
Roman State, 612
Ruhr, occupation of, 675
Ruhr, the, 253, 552, 553, 603, 675-678,
682, 684

Russia, 130, 143, 147, 148, 158, 160, 194,
196, 271, 326, 475, 524, 613, 641, 642,
654, 655, 656, 659, 660-665
Russian Revolution, the, 533
Russo-Japanese War, 158

Sadowa {see KoniggrStz)

Sans-Souci, 260
Saxony, 253 ^

Scheidemaim (Philip), 199, 544
Schifler, 259
Schlageter, Leo, 4
ScUoss, the, 265
Scbmiedt, Ernst, 207
Scbonerer, Georg, von, 98, 99, 101, 109,
110

Schools, 144
Schopenhauer, 305
Schiissler, 591

Schutz-und Trutzbund {see Watch and
Ward League)

Schutzbund, 548
Schwabing, 178
Schwind, Maritz von, 262
Sea power, 142, 143, 273-275
Sedan, 162
Serbia, 159-162
Severing, Carl, 4
Shakespeare, 259
Simon, Reich Chancellor, 678

694

Index

Skagemils, 274
SUceets, 186, 193, 226
Slavization, IS, 38, 93, 95, 109, 120, 129,
158, 159, 636

Social Demoatacy, 37-43, 45, 46, 48-51,
60-62, 64, 76, 160, 173, 174, 217, 236,
342, 456, 472, 473, 477, 493, 502, 527
Social Democratic Parly (rw Social
Democracy)

' Social Revolutionary Party,’ 208
Somme, Battie of, 1%, 191
South German particularism, 554r-S56,
558, 560, 561

South Tyrol, 465, 626-629, 636
Sovereign rights, S67-S73, 575
Spain, 563, 614, 617
Spartacus League, 527, 529, 544
Speech-making, sirt of, 467-471, 473-
477, 480, 481

State authority, Gennan, 518, 519, 529,
530, 534, 535

State, concept of, 386-388, 392-443,
449-452

Stemeckerb^u, Leiber Room, 218, 221
Stinnes, Hugo, 236
Streicher, Julius, 514
Strikes, 27, 195, 198, 202
general, ‘the, 197, 601, 683
Storm troops (.see StunnabteUuag)
Sturmabtdlung, 504, 537, 538, 543, 454-
553

Shdmark/ 12

Syphilis, 246-251, 254-257, 439

Talleyrand, 651
Taxation, 570

Theater, 16, 17, 19, 22, 261, 474
Thirty Years’ War, 396
Trade unions, 39-50, 61, 321-323, 337.
447, 457, 472, 596-606
National Socialist unions, 598-606
Triple Alliance, 128, 129, 145, 146, 621
Tsar, the, 196
Tuberculosis, 246
Turkey, 148, 657, 665

'Ultramontanism, 561, 563-565
Unemployment, 25-27
Unions (see Trade unions)

United front,’ 683

Versailles (peace of), 279, 335, 358} 464,
467-469, 632, 651, 677, 678
Veterans’ clubs, 532-534
Vienna, 5, 13, 15, 18-21, 23, 24, 28, 37,
41, 46, 52-56, 59, 68-71, 75, 79, 84,
85, 92-94, 97, 98, 100, 1.01, 113, 120,
123, 125-128, 130, 147, 154, 155, 158-
161, 627, 628, 651
Vilkiicher Beobachter, 591, 592, 594
VoruHSTts, 195, 228

Wagner, Richard, 213
Waldviertel, 5
War Societies, 555
Wats of Liberation, 157
Watch and Ward League, 561
W’atch on the Rhine, 164
Wehrverbdnde (German word used on
p. 540; otherwise see Combat leagues)
Weimar Constitution, 560
Weimar regime, 599
Weissenburg, 162
Wetterl6 (Emile), 271
Wiener Tagebhtl, 53
William 1, 238

William H, 53, 54, 59, 169, 189, 234, 237,
238, 239 - ■

Wilson, Woodrow, 288
Mtittelsbachs, 127, 203
Working Cla^, German, 168, 169, 317-
320, 331, 336-338, 407, 524, 596, 597,
599, 601, 602, 623, 679
Working Federation of German Folkish
Associations, 508-511, 514-517
World War, 141, 142, 148, 149, 153, 158,
166, 174, 175, 178, 182, 184, 185, 189.
*■ 194, 202, 204, 227-229, 231, 233, 235,
237, 272, 277, 327, 334, 335, 476, 521,
525, 526, 539, 554, 569, 592, 607, 610-
613, 623, 627, 631, 637, 643, 646, 663,
669, 672, 673, 676, 679

Youth, German, 406, 412-418, 539, 541,
577

Zionists, 56, 57, 324

Zirkus Krone, the, 497-501, 503